Parking eye and FCS

After getting a Parking charge issued (no signage visible in carpark) I requested a FOI about the contract between PE and FCS

2. What are the fees or commission paid to Parking Eye?

• The contract, mentioned in question 1, sets out the conditions for when a
fee is paid to Parking Eye from Forest Enterprise Scotland (FES). FES is an
agent agency of Forestry Commission Scotland, who manage the land of the
national forest estate. As stated in question 1, certain information within
the contact has been redacted.

3. How many Parking Charge Notices have been issued?

• 2,434 Parking Charge Notices have been issued.

4. How many of the issued tickets have been paid?

• 1,152 Parking Charge Notices have been paid.

5. How many persons have been successfully taken to a civil court to recover
monies and the value of the monies received?

• To date, no-one has been taken to court in an attempt to recover monies.
However Forest Enterprise Scotland is currently reviewing that position***.

6. How is the money that is generated via these parking charge notices spent
within FCS?

• Money that is generated via the Parking Charge Notices covers the cost of
the initial unpaid parking tickets, the management costs of FES staff
issuing the notices and the costs FES pay to Parking Eye Ltd to administer
the payment system.

***Will be asking what they have to review as its not enforceable in Scotland.

So car the park ticket fees pays for hiring someone to run the car park ticket system?
Mmmmmmmm’k.

So car the park ticket fees pays for hiring someone to run the car park ticket system?
Mmmmmmmm’k.

Perhaps one of Cameron’s “1000 jobs a day”?

Rorschach – they need to check out the recursion thread.

No, the question was about the money generated through the PCNs, not the car park tickets.

Would be interested to see that if someone could forward the FOI on.

As was pointed out only the driver is liable under Scots law and attempting to browbeat the Keeper into paying is risky. There is a running criminal case in Aberdeen where another parking company is facing fraud charges for business practices not too dissimilar.

In addition at Whitlingham Country Park near Norwich ParkingEye are being kicked out for overly aggressive use of the threat of courts.

Under Scots law threatening court without the intention to follow it through is extortion. So it would be interesting to see PE act of behalf of FCS without breaching the legislation in Scotland. It is public land isn’t it

[Marin East Peak]

That’s a pretty disappointing answer. I suppose “the payment system” includes ticketing hardware etc which would be a cost to FC otherwise… But the impression it gives is that FCS aren’t getting any revenue from this, and that their major benefit is just the reduction of costs? Which would be pretty stupid imo. I suppose the unanswered/unasked question is about standard ticket revenues as opposed to fees.

How many locations are they doing this at? I know they have it at Glentress where the need is a bit different- the car park is always full, and full of people not paying, so it’s not all about increasing revenue, it’s also about reducing abuse of the car park.

I read somewhere that ‘Which’ joined in a legal test case, happening under appeal or somesuch. It was newsworthy because they obtained permission to step in, the case being regarded as important precendent-setting. I hope they win.

the impression it gives is that FCS aren’t getting any revenue from this

Pretty standard. I’ve had an 8 year war with my property factors after they introduced a private parking company to my street. I got a copy of the contract last year. Bearing in mind I’m the actual landowner the contract states the private parking company gets to keep all the money from tickets (not that I’d want any)

Aldi us Parking Eye and have set up their help desk to deal with customers that have had tickets. WTF!
wouldn’t be easier to not have both?

My sister in law who is a wheel chair user, parked in a disabled bay (blue badge) for over 2 hours =£55 “fine”.
I armed myself to do battle with Aldi rang their help line asked to make a complaint and the Lady said “is it about Parking Eye?”
Ten minutes later problem gone.

Northwind

How many locations are they doing this at? I know they have it at Glentress where the need is a bit different- the car park is always full, and full of people not paying, so it’s not all about increasing revenue, it’s also about reducing abuse of the car park.

All D&G Stanes. Wired thing imo is that it is FCS staff doing the dirty work(ticketing)and getting all the grief for doing something they don’t want to do on what used to be their weekends off!!
Situation at Ae is even more daft, trying to ticket cars parking in lay-bys and roadside near the shop/cafe, having to pay to use car park to visit either is just petty……

having to pay to use car park to visit either is just petty

+1

Does anyone know if the FC makes money? I’m assuming it does from all the wood it sells. Do they really need to charge for parking. If we’re trying to encourage people into the great outdoors, surely cheaper or free parking would help. Given the locations of the car parks it’s highly unlikely they’ll be abused by people not using the forests.

It says that the Parking Eye fees are covering the costs of “the initial unpaid parking tickets”. I took it that mean that FCS were getting the standard parking fee out of it.

Of course, none of this would be necessary if folk would just pay to park in the first place (ticket machine issues notwithstanding), though I can understand that it must be hard to afford the £3 (or whatever) charge when you’re struggling to make the repayments on your £4k MTB and the lease cost of your £30k car.

I’m guessing its been redacted as its ‘financially sensitive’.

What it really means is its probably really a bad deal.

How many locations are they doing this at? I know they have it at Glentress where the need is a bit different- the car park is always full, and full of people not paying, so it’s not all about increasing revenue, it’s also about reducing abuse of the car park.

Still can’t help but feel that all of this would be much more easily managed using a barrier with a payment machine to let you in for the day. Flat £3 fee, job done.

Even simpler would be a fairly priced single annual permit that covers all forests in England, Scotland & Wales. National Trust manage it without any problems (including reciprocal agreement with NT Scotland).

The “park with ease” thing that just started in Grizedale is pretty hopeless – think it managed to log my reg number correctly on one out of 4 visits…..

Parking Eye are one of many companies who set up simply to make money out of parking fines. My guess is they rent the space from companies so the company make some money when Parking Eye have set up their equipment on the land, but other than that I doubt that the landowners themselves earn anything from the fines.
Previously it was simple enough to ignore any request for a ‘fine’. These days you should reply, and then make an appeal to POPLA if necessary.
The current legal situation is that parking fines should reflect genuine loss. So for instance if you park somewhere without permission and prevent a customer from using a business or the like then a fine can reflect this. Parking Eye being a company who exist purely to make money from issuing parking fine cannot claim loss – their expenses are signage and usually automatic camera systems to record you entering and leaving, plus whatever admin costs they have. These are not affected by you parking wherever you happen to park. So a defendable response is along these sorts of lines. The likelihood if you make any sort of defence along these lines is that they will not bother pursuing it. They make their money from the many people who pay up straight away without realising that their fees are not reasonable or even necessarily legal.
The RAC quite recently published a national article advising that the fines are not legally enforceable and as a result presumably fairly soon there will be some sort of review of the way these ridiculous fines are issued.

The law is different in scotland btw; though I believe the outcome is that parkingeye have even less of a leg to stand on.

I’m going through something at the moment but with euro carparks. They wanted £100- I replied (recorded) three weeks ago. Still haven’t heard a reply as yet.

Looking at the (England) stats- Parking Eye are by far the most litigious of all the other parking companies by a country mile.

I’ll try and find the exact figures but I think for 2014 (in England) PE initiated 30,000 CC cases. Whereas Euro Carparks initiated 100 in the whole of 2014.

I can understand that it must be hard to afford the £3 (or whatever) charge when you’re struggling to make the repayments on your £4k MTB and the lease cost of your £30k car.

😆

actually 4k for Glentress is low, have you seen the number of carbon santa cruz’s there these days!?

I have no problem paying, in fact I wanted to buy a season pass but it doesn’t cover all the car parks I use so I would have to buy multiple passes for the different areas for a national gov org. I have tried to pop my £1 coins in many a machine only for them to roll right through. Twice I’ve had tickets, once the money rolling through and 2nd time there were no signage advising of machine.

I found this advice from trading standards scotland I had the snotty letter from PE and an invoice via my lease car co. Had a long chat with lease company as they were not aware the differing laws in Scotland.

From PE today

Dear Sir / Madam,

We refer to the Parking Charge incurred on 24 January 2015 at 10:00:00, at Kirkhill Car Park car park.

We can confirm that this Charge has been cancelled and there is no outstanding payment due on this account.

Kind Regards,

ParkingEye Team