Parking (Code of Practice) Bill

Giles Watling Excerpts

2nd reading: House of Commons
Friday 2nd February 2018 Commons Chamber

[Luke Hall]

I completely endorse what my right hon. Friend said and hope that the Minister will give that assurance. As has been discussed, parking hotspots can be due to poor signage, unclear signage, poor markings on the floor and even, in some cases, signs that are deliberately designed to mislead the person who is parking and catch out motorists. I am not saying that that is happening in all cases, but it clearly is in some.

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

Does my hon. Friend agree that the provision of confusing signs, along with the confusion over PCNs and the machinery that people have to use to get their tickets, is often deliberate, with the intention of levying fines rather than ordinary parking charges?

[Luke Hall]

It is important for us to address that during the Bill’s passage. Parking hotspots in private locations continue to trap innocent drivers month in month out, year in year out, and because the information is not released, there is little pressure or incentive for layouts to be improved in order to prevent drivers from making the same mistakes. I support the AA’s recommendation that when a private parking company requests a person’s data from the DVLA, it should be required to give either the postcode or the location where the driver was caught, so that the number of parking charges issued per location could be recorded and published by the DVLA. I understand that it would be quite a simple change, and that the information could be added to the V888/3 form that private parking operators have to fill in. I hope that that can be incorporated in either the guidance or the Bill.

I also want to make a point about cost. According to a report published by the Transport Committee report in 2014, which I understand is still accurate, the DVLA charges £2.50 to process each request for information, but the processing costs the DVLA £2.84 per application, which means a deficit of 34p. We are effectively subsidising the private companies that are making the applications, and that surely cannot be right. I hope that we would make the charge the same as the cost, but, if not, we would surely charge slightly more rather than slightly less. The DVLA is having to cover a shortfall of £700,000 a year, which is 0.1% of its total operating costs.

I know that a number of other Members wish to speak. Let me end by saying that this is a positive Bill. I hope we shall be able to address a couple of the points that I have made as it progresses, and that the Minister will give some assurances about the guidance, but I think that it will promote confidence in private operators by creating what will be a set of recognised standards. It is endorsed by the chief executive of the British Parking Association and the director of the RAC Foundation. I commend my hon. Friend for introducing it, and I will support it.

--- Later in debate ---

[Giles Watling (Clacton) (Con)]

It is an honour to follow the hon. Member for Perth and North Perthshire (Pete Wishart). As a touring actor for 45 years, I picked up tickets all over the country, including in his area. It is my pleasure to support the Bill proposed by my right hon. Friend the Member for East Yorkshire (Sir Greg Knight). His proposal for a code of practice sets exactly the right tone. No one is seeking over-intrusive regulation of the private parking market, because there is nothing fundamentally wrong with it if it is run properly and with oversight and consideration. Private parking is a legitimate industry that is vital to economic activity in some areas, and overregulation would put a burden on local authorities, and therefore on the taxpayer, if they had to administer and maintain all the car parks themselves.

However, a code of practice is necessary to inform correct behaviour, as for all public amenities. Without such codes, poor practice grows. I have seen this in my own constituency. My experience in Clacton is with a firm called Smart Parking. It advertised free parking in a very pronounced way on a very big sign. Far less prominent was the request to enter a plate number and to take a ticket. That was required even though the parking in that car park in Ravensdale was supposedly free. The widespread view was that a large “free parking” sign meant just that, so people just parked their cars and went about their business, only to have a hefty fine levied on them because they had missed the deliberately small print.

In my view, that is an outrageous scam, and it is still going on. It enables Smart Parking to issue tickets and therefore collect fines. It would appear that the company is not interested in levying ordinary parking charges. Instead, it raises money through levying these very expensive fines—a legal if dodgy practice. It was totally legal, for instance, that a 70-year-old lady visiting a friend at the Abbey nursing home round the corner from the Ravensdale car park for 45 minutes was later sent a fine in the post, despite the fact that a notice advertising one hour’s free parking was displayed in the car park. I am informed that since Smart Parking took over the site in Clacton, about 400 unfair parking tickets have been issued, and given the local demographics, these have probably been issued predominantly to elderly, and therefore potentially vulnerable, people. Of those, 250 are being pursued by a company called Debt Recovery Plus, one of the debt recovery schemes that we heard about earlier.

Clause 6 of the Bill covers the delegation of functions, and would give the Secretary of State the power to

“enter into an agreement with another public authority authorising the authority to perform any of the functions listed in subsection (2).”

In my mind, that means local councils are in the best place to lead the charge. After all, councils already administer their own municipal car parks, and are experienced in having to balance the needs of the local community, including those of small businesses, parents on the school run and so on. They have the bedrock of skill, experience and local knowledge that can really help to tackle some of the outrageous abuses that we are seeing.

The extant regulation is insufficient. Smart Parking claims that it is fully compliant with British Parking Association guidance, and it is. However, that still allows it to issue hundreds of fines that are legal but totally disingenuous and unjust. That is why I support my right hon. Friend’s Bill. It is unjust that we allow signage that is legally compliant but blatantly results in hundreds of parkers ending up under a misapprehension that causes them to receive fines, as is happening in the Ravensdale car park, off North Road in Great Clacton. When hundreds of people are fined due to the same mass confusion, the system is failing. We in this House need to fix this, just as we once did with unscrupulous clampers.

Having two different accredited trade associations with differing codes of practice creates inconsistency and confusion in the market. We need universal standards that can be understood across the country. For example, there could be a universal standard providing parkers with a five-minute grace period in which to decide whether to buy a ticket or not, having read the signs. They should be able to leave the site with impunity if they decide not to proceed. Sadly, I know of cases of people who have merely driven into a car park then turned round and left, not knowing that an automatic number plate reader had recorded their visit and started the process of issuing a fine.

Let us be clear that the issue is getting worse. As it currently stands, private parking operators seek car keeper details from the DVLA to follow up unpaid charges. Research from the RAC Foundation suggests there was a 28% rise in requests for keeper details in 2016-17 alone, which means private car parking companies are ticketing drivers once every seven seconds—that figure conflicts with an earlier statement. There are an awful lot of parking tickets, anyway.

I urge Ministers to consider how we can bring to bear the core pillars of localism and use this Bill further to empower councils—in line with a code from the Secretary of State, as suggested in the Bill—to root out some of these unscrupulous practices that damage good local parking and, therefore, the economic and tourism prospects of towns across the country.