CP Plus go on shopping spree with Moto windfall

CP Plus and Moto accounts both refer cryptically to a settled legal dispute. This appears to be the early termination of CP Plus's parking contract with Moto.

The MOTO accounts show a profit of £7.2 million from a parking contract termination.

The CP Plus accounts show an Exceptional item where a legal dispute is settled raising an extra £8.2 million.

As both parties cannot have made a profit from terminating a contract, The Prankster makes the reasonable assumption that Moto originally made provision to settle for £15 million, but settled for £7 million.

It appears the money was burning a hole in CP Plus's pockets, because they have now apparently taken over Highview and Ranger Services.

Grahame Rose, Ian Langdon, Tamsin Rickeard, and Elliot Morris all became directors of Highview on 2 June 2015. Simon Leigh and Melvil Corin left on the same day.

Russell Corin became a director of Ranger Services on 1 June 2015. Grahame Rose, Ian Langdon and Tamsin Rickeard, all became directors of Ranger Services on 2 June 2015. Simon Leigh left on the same day.

Grahame Rose, Ian Langdon, and Tamsin Rickeard are all longstanding directors of CP Plus.

Prankster Note

The British Parking Association are fond of saying there is no such thing as free parking, and this apparently demonstrates that.

Landowners who contract in parking management companies on the basis that they are free and will make all their money from targeting their customers soon find out that they have made a bad deal which is difficult to get out of. Their customers complain heavily and move their business elsewhere. The loss in reputation damage and customer retention soon dwarfs any money saved from paying a reputable parking company to manage parking.

Somerfield found this to their cost when ParkingEye started damaging their business. They had to pay £300,000 to get rid of the parking parasites.

B&Q found this next, when they had to pay a reputed £400,000 to get rid of ParkingEye. (Business is now returning now their parking is being managed in a sensitive way).

Now Moto have joined the not-so-free-parking-club. Although the reasons for early termination are not disclosed, The Prankster paraphrases Occam's razor; the most likely explanation is the one which makes fewest assumptions. The most likely explanation, The Prankster believes, is that the contract was terminated due to customer dissatisfaction.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

POPLA changeover starts tomorrow

The operation of POPLA is changing. Although the new system starts in October, new appeals cannot now be fully registered. Instead, you must register your intent to appeal, and when you are then contacted by Ombudsman Services you will then be allowed to register your full appeal.

The full press release is on the old POPLA web site and is reproduced below.

POPLA Press Release

On 1 October 2015, the operation of POPLA is passing from London Councils to Ombudsman Services Limited. As part of the transition process, the British Parking Association has asked London Councils to cease registering new appeals from 21 August 2015.

However, once you have been notified that we have received and forwarded your intention to appeal, no further enforcement action can proceed until after the appeal has been finally decided.

Any delay in appeals being registered obviously does not affect the strict requirements, including time limits, provided by Schedule 4 to the Protection of Freedom Act 2012, from applying. Equally it does not affect the requirements of the BPA Code of Practice regarding dealing with original representations within the timescales provided.

To find out how to register an intention to appeal with the Ombudsman Services Limited, please click here, which will take you to a new page.

Assessors at London Councils will not determine any appeals after 30 September 2015, whatever date they were registered. 

The statement of the Lead Adjudicator regarding cases adjourned pending handing down of the decision of the Supreme Court of the United Kingdom (available here) remains in force.

DEAL fail to turn up to court

B42YJ643 DEBT ENFORCEMENT & ACTION LTD -v- PERSHAD
20-08-2015 Bath


A BMPA representative turned up as an observer for this case. Nobody else did. DEAL had served a notice of discontinuance on the court and Ms Pershad. Quelle surprise!

The judge formally dismissed the claim and no costs were asked for or awarded.

The BMPA representative did notice that on the 'Case of The Week' noticeboard just outside the courtroom was pinned a copy of a Daily Mail article on the ParkingEye v Beavis Supreme Court hearing.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

Twitter fail blacklists Prankster Blog

A recent change in Twitter has started to blacklist The Prankster blog site.

Now when The Prankster Tweets, this error appears.

The Prankster has diligently checked himself and concludes he is not automated. Although he is a fan of Humans, he has not turned into a robot and there is no crafty code on his laptop blasting out Tweets. Most Tweets are just links to his own blog articles. No matter how many times he 'please tries again later' the error message remains; possibly, the more times The Prankster retries, the more automated he looks, and the smugger Twitter gets as it continues to blacklist posts.

Unlike The Prankster, Twitter is automated so there is no-one he can complain to to get the blacklist removed and the problem resolved. The Prankster took to splitting his links into pieces which works, in that the Tweets get posted, but doesn't work, in that you cannot click on the link to get to the blog.

Other bloggers have the same problem and Mr Mustard helpfully suggested some workarounds, such as using TinyUrl.

This works, in that the Tweet gets posted, but does not work, in that people clicking on the link now get hijacked by Twitter and sent to this page.

So what on earth are Twitter doing?

As it happens The Prankster does have some experience in this area, having 11 patents in the field of anti-spam and anti-malware hanging in his downstairs toilet*.

This blog site is hosted on Google's blogger.com. While it is possible Google have messed up and allowed malware on their servers The Prankster considers this is unlikely. The Prankster also uses a fairly basic setup without bells and whistles and so does not consider his own modifications are the problem either.

A possible reason is 'The Prescott  Effect', so called because John Prescott complained that the adverts on a fellow MP's website were for Thai Brides. It was later pointed out to him that the adverts which appeared were chosen based on his own previous browsing habits.

The Prankster does have adverts on his blog page, which are provided by Google. He is reluctant to remove them because they do almost cover his hosting costs. However, it has been known for criminals to use adverts as a place to hide malware, and it is possible that a Twitter researcher whose job it is to find malware, visited the blog and was duly served malware in an advert.

The other possibility is that it is just a cock-up by Twitter. While possibly not as serious as the time Trend Micro quarantined all email with the letter 'P', it is still annoying.

If anyone does know any humans still working at Twitter who can solve this, please point them at this email address: prankster@parking-prankster.com. All emails, including those with the letter 'P', will be accepted.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster


*this is not true as currently the downstairs toilet is being redecorated. However, it is more true than say the phrase 'this parking charge is a genuine pre-estimate of loss'.

Proserve run out of friends

Proserve Enforcement Solutions (sole proprietor Stephen Duff) are an organisation who attempt to scam motorists by charging ludicrous amounts of money for trespass. Unsurprisingly, the courts do not agree with them, and the scam has now been reined in - only motorists who are gullible now pay up, and Proserve has stopped issuing court claims.

The scam has nose-dived even further because the DVLA have recently ruled that Proserve must be a member of an ATA to get keeper details, so now Proserve have no way of contacting the keeper (apart from cases such as lorries where contact details are on the vehicle). Proserve took the DVLA to a judicial review, but lost, fairly spectacularly.

Since then, Proserve have been attempting to join an ATA. So far, this has not been entirely successful as Proserve require the ATA to change the code of practice to suit them.

Unsurprisingly, the ATA and the DVLA do not agree with Proserve's suggested changes, as this letter from the DVLA shows. Other operators who enforce on the basis of trespass have apparently no trouble in obeying the code of practice. The Prankster suspects Proserve's main objection is that they will have to reduce charges from £250 to £100, but it might also be that they will be required to change their rubbish signage (described by HHJ Moloney as a nonsense), or that they object to using POPLA to arbitrate appeals..

Proserve have now gone for the nuclear option of threatening legal action against the DVLA and the ATAs. Although this works well against motorists, as Civil Enforcement Limited have found to their advantage, The Prankster does not think the DVLA will be losing any sleep over this threat.

Stephen Duff has an increasing list of legal failures behind him, including failing to get his charges ratified on appeal at the small claims, having to pay £8,000 back to an operator, losing a judicial review and Lasty but not Leasty failing to get his bailiff licence renewed.

However, as his contract require the landowner to pay him £250 for essentially photographing stopped vehicles then presumably his income stream has not reduced and he has plenty of money to blow on legal fees. The landowners of course will be well out of pocket and possibly minded not to renew contracts.

...unless he lied to the court about the true nature of his contracts with landowners and they don't pay him unless the motorist pays up.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

IPC Kangaroo court defies Government requirements

The Prankster has received another bizarre judgment from the Independent Parking Committee's kangaroo court, the IAS.

The Appellant raises two main grounds of appeal, the lack of notice due to the absence of visible signs at night time and that the charge is not commercially justifiable.

Both the Appellant and Operator provide evidence of the site at night time, the photographs of the Appellant show that the signs are difficult to read, and those of the Operator contradict this and present the signs as visible and prominent. In this appeal the onus is on the Appellant to prove their claims are more likely than not. As the evidence from both parties supports their argument I cannot be satisfied by either party, and therefore, as the onus is on the Appellant, I cannot allow the appeal on this basis.

Commercial justifiability of the charge is only relevant where the claim is for breach of contract. In this case, in my view, the claim is not for breach. The contractual terms confirm that any driver parking without displaying a ticket agrees to pay the charge. It is, in effect, the price the Appellant has agreed to pay for not having a ticket. Once the driver has entered an agreement with the Operator to pay the charge, the Operator does not have to subsequently show that the charge is commercially justifiable.

Even if the claim is for breach the recent Court of appeal case of Beavis v Parking Eye made it clear that such charges are legal if they are commercially justifiable. As the amount here is similar to that allowed by the Court of Appeal, this ground of appeal is dismissed.

Finally, any complaints regarding the Operator or the independence of this appeal fall outside of the scope of this appeal and should be raised as complaints should the Appellant so wish.

The operator evidence of the site at night time contained signs illuminated by torches and headlights. Only an incompetent assessor would have failed to realise this, leading to the obvious conclusion that the assessor is either incompetent or institutionally biased against motorists.

The Prankster has not seen the actual signage at this site, but has seen plenty of other Excel signage and therefore considers it likely the charge is for breach of contract. POPLA, judges, and even Excel themselves have previously ruled the same in large numbers of documented cases and therefore the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations 1999, regulation 7 comes into play - if there is any ambiguity it must be resolved in favour of the consumer. As a multitude of legally qualified persons have rules Excel's signage implies charges are for breach of contract, then any competent assessor would rule similarly.

The assessor also show their bias and incompetence by quoting ParkingEye v Beavis without justification. The proper appeals service, POPLA, has this to say.

However is not clear that the Court of Appeal decision actually gave the clarity that has been widely reported, particularly in situations where some payment is required to park. It is arguable that the decision does not apply in such circumstances and it is possible this could be the course followed in the County Court in future cases.

It is becoming more and more obvious that the IPC appeals service is not fit for purpose and should be suspended by the DVLA as soon as possible.

No doubt the IAS barista makes a lovely cup of coffee but they are a disgrace to the legal profession and have no business working in an appeals service. If Will Hurley and John Davies have any morals they will suspend the barista and report them to the Solicitors Regulatory Authority.

Parliamentary Briefing

It is worth referring to the recent briefing paper, published this month. Although the document is flawed and contains many inaccuracies, The Prankster notes the following:

Where this marks a change from previous practice is that formerly a landowner only had recourse to the courts if they made a charge for parking on their land but did not enforce it with clamping. The changes outlined in the 2012 Act allow landowners to recover parking charges and drivers and vehicle owners to challenge fines without having to go to court, a process which can be time consuming and costly. 

As the IAS decisions are irrational and either incompetent or institutionally biased, this can only lead to more court cases, not less. Nothing makes this more clear than the statement in the assessment:

In this appeal the onus is on the Appellant to prove their claims are more likely than not

As this is the exact opposite of the legal system in this courtly, where the claimant is required to prove their case, not the defendant, then no IAS judgment is worth the paper it is written on.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

Judge throws out DEAL parking claim - defendant was not born at the time

DEAL filed a number of parking claims a while back. Although solicitor Michael Schwartz stated recently in court that he personally checks all claims, he failed to notice that in a large number of claims the parking date was 1 January 1900.

DEAL decided to take at least one case all the way to a hearing. The judge dismissed the claim on the basis that the defendant was not born at the time.

The case was reported on pepipoo.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster