DVLA and Private Car Parking Companies

Debate between Kirsten Oswald and Adrian Bailey

Tuesday 21st March 2017 Westminster Hall

[Mr Adrian Bailey (West Bromwich West) (Lab/Co-op)]

It is a pleasure to serve under your chairmanship, Ms Dorries. I congratulate the hon. Member for Torbay (Kevin Foster) on securing this debate.

I speak from the perspective of the consumer and the tourist who visits the south-west on a regular basis, rather than as a Member of Parliament dealing with complaints submitted by the public. The car parking in my constituency is run by Sandwell Council. Although I am sure that there are plenty of residents who have had issues over the years, I cannot honestly say that I have received the volume of complaints in my postbag that would justify me taking up the issue. However, I have had personal experience as a tourist in the south-west with a private parking company, which I would like to bring to the hon. Gentleman’s notice. That experience raised concerns, and I considered taking exactly the same actions as he has. I will not mention the company concerned because I have not informed it—as he said, there are issues around parliamentary privilege that should not be exploited—but it is legitimate to mention my experience.

As someone educated at Exeter University, and whose ancestors on my father’s side all hail from the Falmouth and Penryn area, I have an enduring affection for the area and love to visit it, which I do on a regular basis. However, as a tourist, I have had two experiences there that were exceedingly off-putting.

The first was when I parked at Falmouth quayside car park and left the car. It was very windy. I went back, picked up a coat and then came back later to find that I had got a parking notice. What had happened in the meantime was that my ticket had blown off the dashboard and was on the floor. I appealed to the company and got a response offering to halve the fine. I was still indignant, but thought, like many people in my position, “Oh, what the heck; I will accept it as a compromise,” and paid up. That was a couple of years ago.

Last year, I parked at Perranporth. On that occasion it was pouring with rain, and I decided it was not immediately appropriate to go for a walk on the beach. I joined my wife for a cup of tea in a nearby café, leaving the car window open because we had the dog in the back. We came back and took the dog for a walk, returned to the car and found that, yet again, I had got a parking ticket. I was quite astonished because my ticket was on the dashboard, but then I realised what had happened. I have a Honda Civic and the dashboard is split-level: the ticket had slid under the ledge at the front and was not visible from the front. Well, I took the ticket and very indignantly went to the attendant, who said, “Oh, you can appeal.” So I did.

Within four hours, I was appealing online. I got a response and some photos, which basically dismissed everything I said. There were two photos—one taken from the front of the car, in which the ticket was not visible, and the other from the passenger-side window, in which where the ticket was could be seen with difficulty. Had that photo been taken from the driver’s side, the ticket would have been perfectly visible and readable. I was furious. I have dug my heels in and not paid the fine. To date, I have received three debt collection notices; I am collecting them and waiting to see what the company does about it.

[Kirsten Oswald (East Renfrewshire) (SNP)]

My constituent, Steve Mostyn, parked in the Clarkston car park. He paid his 50p and was a bit surprised to receive a penalty charge. It appeared that he had keyed in a digit wrongly; the number he had keyed in did not actually appear in the DVLA database—that registration number did not exist—but the company still fined him. He found that completely unacceptable. He thinks that the model that Smart Parking is operating is corrupt and unethical, and is particularly concerned that those who are more vulnerable and those who can perhaps least afford to pay are those who will not feel able to appeal and will just cave in. Does the hon. Gentleman agree that that is simply unacceptable?

[Mr Bailey]

I have heard similar cases. I have detected a difference in the way in which local authority-run parking systems are reasonably responsive to that. The private car parking operators are not. Again, it points to a culture and philosophy that is designed to catch people out and make the most money out of perfectly human mistakes, despite the fact that an individual on every other criteria will have demonstrated that they not only accept the principle of paying, but have done their personal best to conform to the conditions that preside over the process.

From my experience in the south-west, there are a number of issues that have to be looked at. First, there is the issue of organisations that employ private car parking companies to exercise this activity. After my experience at Perranporth, I complained to the organisation that employs the private car parking company, but it just dismissed my complaint and said that it had contacted the company concerned and that I could appeal—we were going round in circles.

Any organisation in an area such as the south-west, which is hugely dependent on the tourism industry, has to take a degree of responsibility for the way in which the company it contracts to operate its car parks behaves. Tourism is a highly competitive industry, and if anybody who goes on holiday to those areas has such an experience, their abiding memory will be the injustice that has been inflicted upon them, despite the fact that they tried to be law-abiding, civil citizens and tourists. They not only feel that personally, but recount it to other people, which deters would-be visitors to the area. Those companies do no service to their area or their tourist industry by having such a system.

As the hon. Gentleman highlighted, this raises legal issues, because by and large tourists are not lawyers and do not know about the legal vacuum in which those companies operate, so they assume that the companies have to conform to laws that do not actually exist. There is a wider issue of educating the public, and I think there is a very good case for tightening up the regulation to ensure the companies that operate private car parks are licensed and subject to an agreed set of standards. There should be an appeal process that is totally independent of the industry to adjudicate when there are genuine disputes, as there always will be in such circumstances.

I fear that areas that make the mistake of employing that sort of company could damage themselves and the industry to the detriment of the perception of the area and to the benefit of the most sharp-practiced operators—the hon. Gentleman described them as cowboys. I ask the Minister to look at the issues that the hon. Gentleman and I raised, and those that I am sure other hon. Members will raise, with a view to looking at how the regulation of the industry can be tightened up to the benefit of the affected individuals and the economies of the areas where such practices operate.