At wit’s end with parking ‘cowboys’ making drivers’ lives sheer misery
I don’t know what Perth has done to be on the receiving end of what seems to be the worst excesses of private parking operators.
Our city seems to be plagued by these cowboys and they have made life a misery for Perthshire motorists.
The prime culprits are of course Smart Parking and I receive more complaints about their Kinnoull Street operation than I do about any other single issue in the city. As private operators go they are simply the pits.
Not to be outdone, the car parking operators at the St Catherine’s retail park are now competing hard to secure this distinction.
In this‘free’car park people are being‘fined’up to £100 for leaving one part of the retail park to access facilities in another part.
The western part of the car park is ringed with signs saying that if anybody has the temerity to leave this section they will be‘fined’. People’s privacy is being invaded by car park attendants taking photographs of unsuspecting customers to prove this‘crime’.
I have since written to St Catherine’s owner, Episo Boxes, to get this resolved and to stop this appalling and nonsensical practice.
I have also since found that, UKPCS, the private parking company at the centre of this controversy, is not a full member of the British Parking Association and does not comply with the BPA’s code.
This has to end and I am pleased to announce that we might be in the twilight months of the private parking cowboys.
I am co-sponsoring a bill that for the first time will bring in a binding code of Wishart conduct and establish a regulatory body that will exercise control over the parking cowboys. This bill will be in the House of Commons at the beginning of February.
As the bill progresses I will be pushing for any‘parking charge notices’to be proportionate with a full description of what a parking charge notice constitutes.
The parking cowboys try to dress these up as‘fines’when in fact they are not backed up by law.
Instead, they are invoices for a breach of contract. The car park operator has to take you to the civil court and prove that you broke their terms and conditions. They practically never do this. This should be fully explained in any PCN levied.
The use of debt collection agencies should also come to an end.
These are grossly invasive and threatening and meant to intimidate people into paying.
I will be putting forward amendments to have this practice outlawed.
Lastly, the use of the DVLA to give details of people’s addresses in order that cars can be tracked down - the right to use this facility should be lost if there seems to be an inordinate number of complaints about the behaviour of a private company, such has been received about Smart Parking.
In my experience, people are happy to pay for their parking and an arrangement that ensures parking on private land is properly charged and any transgressions proportionately tackled is the way forward.
Surely it is not beyond our wit to design such an arrangement? Perth and North Perthshire SNP MP Pete