App for illegal parking

LONDON: A British car parking company has provoked a strong reaction by developing a clever app that promises to pay users to report illegally parked cars.

UK Car Park Management’s (UK CPM) i-Ticket app, which is available for free on Google Play and the App Store, pays a £10 (R166) commission to users who upload a picture of the vehicle and its registration number.

The company then uses Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency data to send a £60 fine to the vehicle owner, a fee that rises to £100 if it isn’t paid within two weeks.

Unsurprisingly, i-Ticket has provoked strong reactions, with the RAC’s Simon Williams branding it a “recipe for disaster”.

“This is wrong on so many levels it beggars belief,” he said. “The sharp practices of parking companies are already regularly called into question with paid officials dishing out fines, but with members of the public being financially encouraged to shop motorists who overstay, it’s a recipe for disaster.

“This will cause total chaos by undermining trust still further.”

UK CPM reportedly runs car parks for the likes of Tesco and McDonald’s, but i-Ticket appears to be designed for smaller companies which can’t afford to pay staff to monitor their own car parks.

“This free app allows you to protect your land and parking spaces,” reads the app’s description. “Using the app you can issue parking tickets to all those vehicles which park on your land without your permission.”

Once users register an account, UK CPM promises to install car park signs within five days. The company also promises “complete privacy” to users who report drivers. “Our parking tickets and signs have no reference to yourself, all correspondence is designed to make the motorist believe they have been caught by a CPM patrol warden,” it says on its website. – The Independent