Only councils and the police can issue parking charges on the public highway and Newcastle Council confirmed that UKCPS were not acting as their agents.
Google street view shows no signs giving UKCPS or any other agency any interest in parking enforcement, although the pictures are dated September 2012.
This therefore appears to be criminal activity and the fraudulent issuing of tickets with no basis, knowing that a large percentage of motorists will just pay up.
The Parking Prankster understands that the motorist has complained both to the DVLA and the BPA Ltd. The Prankster will be watching the outcome keenly. According to the BPA Ltd, issuing tickets on land where you have no contract in place with the landowner is punishable by up to 10 sanction points and a possible ban. The DVLA has similar powers to ban rogue operators from accessing the DVLA database.
The Prankster is keen to see whether the BPA Ltd take this seriously and require a full investigation resulting in all wrongly issued tickets in the location to be refunded, plus a random audit of other tickets to see if the problem is widespread within UKCPS. IPC Ltd, the new rivals to the BPA Ltd, do take this kind of thing seriously, auditing 20-50 parking charges a year per AOS member.
No doubt the Prankster will be spurred into immediate action regarding this at some time in the future as events materialise.
Happy Parking
The Parking Prankster
I have spoken with Newcastle City Council this morning about the operation of UKCPS in the area around Walsall Dog track. There are loads of their signs on the fence along this raod. However it appears that this road is at least private but there's no reason to accept that a legitimate operation is being carried out nevertheless.
ReplyDeleteOn the matter of Brunel Road along by Newcastle Arena, I am assured by the council that it is a public highway.
They will have no right to "manage" (spit) this area for parking matters and can only be doing so as a fraudulent activity.
Hertz UK recently charged 142 pounds to my credit card for parking in a UKCPS area in Leeds - which was odd as the car was in Cheshire at the time of the supposed infringement! I have written to UKCPS asking for photo evidence to back up this charge and have heard nothing - what is my next step?
ReplyDeleteGet over to pepipoo.com for detailed help. In a nutshell, Contact your credit company to tell them this is fraud and you need a chargeback. Contact police to say your numberplate is cloned. Contact dvla to warn them in case you also get speeding tickets etc. Contact UKCPS to say your car numberplate was cloned.
DeleteUKCPS have been doing the same thing in Lincoln, trying to charge vehicles parked on a public road next to one of their private car parks.
ReplyDeleteThey made a mistake trying to ticket my car, which resulted in a series of complaints being lodged to the IPC (who they're currently with), the DVLA and the ICO.
They claim they have since taken the signage down thats outside their car park, but we'll see if thats the case when I 'm next in town.