the Uni I work at has a private company now enforcing its parking. They gave my car a penalty notice (even though from the photos taken by a ‘friend’ I would dispute it was parked in violation of the rules).

I ignored it.

I have now got a letter asking me to pay £120 or risk going to court.

My understanding is:
* it’s a civil offence, and I don’t have to give them any information
* they can only prosecute the person who parked the car there
* if I can’t recall who that was, the case will fail
* if they can prove who parked it there, then damages are payable – which are likely to be, at most, another day’s charge of parking in case I stopped someone parking – i.e. obvious losses they have incurred – so probably, nothing

so my assumption is it won’t go to court and after a few more letters they will drop it.

Should I write to them at all, or just ignore it all?

Any lawyers here?

ta!

You can ignore it, but be careful where you park at work from now on…

You are probably right – and the advice is likely to involve visitng pepido or whatever it is called.

A couple of words of warning though:

– a smart University should have written into its T&Cs (for students and staff) that vehicles they bring onto campus must be parked in accordance with the local rules and regulations. A university aware of the DVLA registerred keeper disclosure is not equal to contract with the driver on the day should probably have added further conditions that parking rules (and charges) apply not only to vehicles where you are the driver, but where you (staff/student) is the registerred keeper.

– when I was at University you were unable to graduate until any debts to the university had been settled.

Although you can ignore them, in this particular case it sounds like your employer may be the person who’s employing them? So is there a possibility of misconduct proceedings under the university’s policies and regulations?

Tell the uni management and let them sort it out.

unless they take a share of the parking fine income.

Make a FOI request to find out.

The bit about it being on your employer’s land is a bit of a game changer to the usual “just ignore it” guidance, further compounded in difficulty by the third party enforcement company imo. You can usually ignore it and never park at the disputed site again but if you need to go back to the site because you work there….

Is the system joined up – i.e. does the uni have a register of the reg number of employees cars? Also what was it that you did wrong? Presumably the owner of the land has the power to nullify the judgment of the operating company they employed so if the evidence you have looks reasonable to a normal common sense capable human (i.e. not a parking firm) and you can find one at the uni that might clear it up for you.

Do not contact them under ANY circumstances.

Unless you want to supply them with evidence they could use against you.

Example Letters

I’m currently twice on stage 3 (final) of one company’s letters (for 2 ‘incidents’). Ignore. Tickets are unenforceable and powerless. They are shady companies who use dodgy immoral tactics to get their cash.

FFS we just got one of these this morning from TPS, they can whistle!

Is the company ‘Excel Parking’ by any chance?

Our university doesn’t do anything if you park somewhere dodgy, until you’d done it a few times, then you get a disciplinary hearing, or so I’m told.
I’m not sure they’re quite as “joined up” as they could be though. I’ve had a sticky sticker attached because I used a different car to the one that’s noted on the permit, yet their online facilities allow addition of a second car. I’ve also had a “your car isn’t registered with us” when having forgotten to transfer permit from car to car, which they could have found out it was if they’d phoned back to base as it was the originally registered vehicle. Oh well.