The hotel lunch that left me with a £100 parking fine
Probes a world of scams and scandals
Ms P.S. writes: I was given vouchers for lunch at the Petersham Hotel in Richmond in Surrey. I made a booking and when I arrived I left my car in the car park, displaying my Blue Badge. At the reception desk, no one commented on any need for a permit, nor was there a ticket on my car when we left. But a week later, I received a penalty notice saying I did not have permission to park there. Since then, the car park sign has been changed. I tried to contact the manager, but with no response. THE demand you received came from a company called Civil Enforcement Limited, asking for £100 as a parking charge since you did not have permission to park on the hotel’s land while you ate in its restaurant. If you paid within 14 days, the charge was reduced to £60.
You appealed to POPLA, the privately run Parking on Private Land Appeals body. It replied that your Blue Badge ‘does not have any bearing on the matter’. All that counted was that you failed to obtain a permit. By this time the 14 days had passed and you were facing a £100 bill for the privilege of parking at the hotel while you ate there.
I tried to take this up with the Petersham Hotel, but its management failed to offer any comment, or to explain why you were not told on arrival that you needed a permit. That left Civil Enforcement Limited, which turned out to be more than a little secretive.
According to company records, its sole director was Willem Marthinus de Beer, but since he told Companies House that he lives in South Africa, it seemed reasonable to assume that someone else was running Civil Enforcement’s offices behind the town hall in Liverpool, so I went there.
Horton House is a large building but the doorman knew exactly where to send me. The only problem was that there was absolutely no sign of Civil Enforcement. It has no office there and no staff. What I found was a branch of Regus, the firm that takes in mail for anyone who pays and then forwards it to their real location.
I left a letter for Civil Enforcement, pointing out that the original car park sign at the Petersham Hotel was headed ‘Customer Guest Parking Only’. Since you were a customer, you had no reason to get out of your car and read the far smaller print that told you to get a permit from the hotel. The replacement sign is headed ‘Permit Holders Only’, which is much clearer.
Civil Enforcement failed to comment, so I dug a little deeper and found that behind it stood a separate company called Creative Car Park Bidco Ltd. Then, while I was still digging, de Beer quit and control of Civil Enforcement switched to a Leeds firm called Project Neptune Bidco. It is owned by another company, which in turn is owned by another company, which itself is owned by an offshore company.
But one name that emerged is Gary Wayne, 49, who gives a contact address in Hertfordshire but also says he lives in Israel.
Almost 15 years ago, The Mail on Sunday reported a flurry of complaints from motorists who received demands from another of Wayne’s car park companies.
It was also part of a complex web and also used a maildrop address. At the time, Wayne explained car parking was a ‘sensitive issue’ that justified secrecy while allowing him to purchase personal details of drivers from the DVLA for a few pounds each. Nothing has changed.
That said, one thing that has changed is that Civil Enforcement cancelled your parking charge notice.
There has been no explanation. You simply received a letter saying: ‘We now confirm that this notice has been cancelled.’ The unsigned letter came from the non-existent ‘Representations Team’ at Horton House in Liverpool.
But confusingly, the appeals body POPLA stuck to its decision that the charge was justified, telling me it believes the new, clearer sign at the Petersham Hotel was erected before you lunched there.
The lack of any statement from the hotel management makes it hard to be definite, so all I can say is that I hope the owners of the hotel feel that handing over control of their car park to Gary Wayne and his companies has been a sensible decision.