In April 2013, 48 year old Barry Beavis had overstayed by 56 minutes the two hour parking limit at a private car park at Riverside retail park in Chelmsford. The car park, run by parking company Parking Eye Ltd, allowed for two hours of free parking, but Mr Beavis left his car there for almost 3 hours.

Mr Beavis received a £85 parking fine from Parking Eye in the mail a few days later. However, Mr Beavis refused to pay the fine, and in 2014 Parking Eye Ltd took Barry Beavis to the County Court in Cambridge. Mr Beavis lost his County Court case and was ordered to pay the £85 parking ticket. The order was stayed, pending an appeal to Court of Appeal.

That appeal was held in February 2014 in the Court of Appeal. Mr Beavis had claimed that the amount of £85 constituted a penalty and was therefore void. In established contract law, if a contract is breached, the other party can only be required to pay the damages caused by that breach in order to put the other party back into the position they had been in had the contract not been breached. For example, of Parking was £5, and the driver had not paid, then the driver could only be required to pay £5, plus perhaps a reasonable administration charge of £10 or perhaps £20. However, anything more than that amount is considered to be a penalty is considered to be void under established contract law. Only statutory authorities such as Police and Councils are allowed to charge penalties as a means of deterring certain behaviour.
So the Court of Appeal case hinged around whether or not £85 can be considered a penalty, when the true cost of parking was zero. The court ruled that whilst £85 was more than the loss suffered by Parking Eye:
- It was not extravagantly so, and therefore did not consider it to be a penalty.
- It didn’t fall foul of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999

However, even though Parking Eye won the case, Barry Beavis has been allowed to appeal the decision to the Supreme Court. Mr Beavis hasn’t lodged the appeal yet, but he is currently raising funds for the appeal. We are expected to know within a few weeks whether he gets his appeal lodged. If it does get lodged within the time limit, then it will another one to two years before consumers find out the result of the appeal.

Private parking companies operate their car parks by using ANPR systems (Automated Number Plate Recognition) that use cameras and software to identify the cars that enter and leave the car park parks, and the time of day that they do so. The companies can then calculate the amount of time that each vehicle spent inside the car park. If it exceeds the time limit specified on the signs at the car park entrances, then the car park company applies to the DVLA for the name and address of the registered keeper of the vehicle. The car park company (Parking Eye in this case) then sends a parking charge notice (PCN) to registered keeper’s address asking them to pay amount specified on the signs (£85 in this case). If the registered keeper doesn’t pay, then the company takes the matter to court. Prior to the court of appeal’s judgement, the registered keep as often as not, was able to beat the charge in court. However, the court of appeal decision has now changed the legal landscape.

What can be done about this? Talk to your Member of Parliament, and ask for the law to be changed, so that private parking companies cannot charge more for PCN’s than statutory authorities such as council can. Council’s typically charge less than £50 for a penalty notice.