Parking Charges Capped at £100 and Car Clocking Banned
A statutory code for private car parks has been laid in Parliament, freezing the maximum charge at £100, guaranteeing five minutes to decide whether to park and ten to leave, and capping minor errors such as a mistyped registration at £20. Operators who do not comply lose access to driver records. Winding back an odometer also becomes a banned practice.
The enforcement mechanism is the interesting part, because the sanction is commercial rather than criminal: an operator that breaches the code loses access to vehicle-keeper data, without which it cannot pursue anybody. There will also be a first independent scrutiny and oversight board, and charges must be cancelled on appeal where there was a breakdown, a medical emergency, a broken ticket machine or an honest mistake. Just under seventeen million charges were issued last year on the government’s own figure; a higher figure and a daily total circulating this morning come from a motoring organisation’s analysis rather than official statistics. The prime minister put it in household terms: “being a few minutes late back to your car or typing one digit of your numberplate wrong shouldn’t end with a hefty fine landing on your doormat.” The industry body notes that many of the principles “are already reflected in the existing voluntary code”. The RAC says it is not the leap it campaigned for and wants debt recovery fees banned outright; a consultation on those, currently capped at £70, follows next year.