Prankster fails to make top 50 twitter accounts who all follow each other

Getparkplus has published a list of the top 100 parking influencers.

The list was compiled by collecting sets of twitter accounts related to the keyword 'parking', and then finding out which accounts are followed by other accounts in the data set.

The Prankster failed to make the cut. Other notable failures include, Parking Cowboys, the Notomob and Barry Beavis.

The algorithm used only takes into account the closed twitter group mutual admiration society, and does not measure number of followers, number of parking related tweets, blog activity, blog hits, website hits, facebook score, books published or book ranking.

Or, come to that, the number of petitions successfully submitted to parliament (requires at least 10,000 signatures).

The Prankster therefore publishes another list of the top 10 parking influences, which he copied from here

xepidissi
lobularis
gaowzz
rappervert
skuukkyz
markwillard85
jieonnie
svtminqyu
sujuna

The Prankster did not make this list either. Hmm.

The Prankster therefore devised his own algorithm to make a list of the top one parking influencers of all time and can announce the most influential parking tweeter is....
















...Parking Cowboys.

Hmm. The Prankster will be back soon, once he has sufficiently tweaked the algorithm.


Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

ParkingEye lose in court - bad signage

ParkingEye v Mr K, Swindon County Court

Mr K appeared for himself. Miss Upoku from LPC Law represented ParkingEye.

Mr K based his argument on signage. The entrance sign met the BPA standard for size, font etc. but was out of view from the driver’s seat when entering the car park because it is located 2 meters up and facing perpendicular from the direction you travel in to enter, instead of straight ahead. The first sign you come across is one that contains the contract (lots of small print) and if you park in the first available spaces the next sign was hidden by a tree branch. Mr K argued that the other 18 or 19 signs throughout the car park were inconsequential because he didn’t pass them before he parked up. He supplied a video for evidence.

The Judge ruled that it wasn’t reasonable to expect the driver to know that there was a fee for overstaying based on this. He questioned Mr K who had visited the car park twice before due to the fact that you have to pass a number of signs before leaving the car park so he might have known it was a controlled park. Mr K argued that you wouldn’t be looking for signs when leaving and that driving through the car park can be avoided if the space in front is empty. If the space in front is empty you can pass through it and miss out the rest of the car park.

The claim was dismissed and Mr K was awarded costs. Leave to appeal was refused as the decision was made on a finding of fact, not a point of law.

On the court finding that the def. did not know and that the visibility of the signs was such that he could not have been reasonably aware of their existence

1) Claim dismissed
2) By 3/5/16 Cl pay £95 costs
3) Permission to appeal refued because the court finds as a fact that the 1(b) sign was not visible from a car, the sign near where D parked was obscured by foilage and that whilst D could have seen the 1(a) sign near the entrance he had to absorb other information on entering the car park and that sign alone was not sufficiently prominent to establish that it was unreasonable that he missed it.

Prankster Note

Signs 1(a) and 1(b) were from ParkingEye's evidence pack.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

MIL Collections lose in Bristol

MIL Collections v RC

MIL Collections lost in court in Bristol County Court on 19th April. MIL decided not to turn up and informed the court and defendant they would be relying on the paperwork. They suggested the defendant might prefer not to turn up too, but the invitation was politely declined.

The judge read through the case, which took about 15 minutes, and asked how the value of the alleged debt was arrived at. The defendant confirmed this appeared to be by adding random amounts to letters from Parking Debt Collectors, Dara Debt Recovery and MIL Collections, as no other explanation had ever been advanced.

The defence points disputing the claim were:

• Champerty and maintenance (per MIL v Bowker)
• JAS provided no evidence that the car wasn't parked in accordance with their rules
• JAS didn't follow the POPLA process properly.

The judge took the point about champerty and maintenance but decided that point failed. He decided that the claim failed because no evidence was provided that the parking terms had been contravened. The photographs simply showed a well-parked car. The judge stated that JAS Parking would therefore also have failed had they brought the claim.

Prankster Note

The Prankster is not aware of any contested hearing which MIL Collections have won. It appears then that MIL rely on bullying and intimidation to make their profits, rather than any substance to their cases. It also appears that MIL do not believe that the concept of debt applies to them - The Prankster has heard of several cases where costs were awarded against MIL, but which MIL have not paid.

Have you won a case against MIL which MIL have not paid? If so, please contact the Prankster at prankster@parking-prankster.com.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

Link Parking win Pyrrhic victory in court. Will Hurley's two faced behaviour exposed.

Link Parking won in court in Cardiff, charging a visitor to a housing estate for daring to have their wheel a few inches over the line.

Their evidence pack showed the car parked in the next bay had no problems.

Despite Gladstones attempts to foul-up the case by filing signage which belonged in another car park***, the judge decided to be lenient and allow Link to introduce new evidence after the filing deadline.

The victory showed how out of touch with the needs of their customers Link Parking are. The landowner had repeatedly asked Link to cancel the charge as the motorist was a genuine visitor. When Link refused, their contract was cancelled by the landowner.

The court hearing was therefore something of a last hurrah for Link Parking. Link Parking will have been well out of pocket with the case, paying Gladstones to file the case and prepare a witness statement, plus a solicitor from LPC law to conduct the hearing for them. And of course they will no longer be plying their unwanted trade in the housing estate, having been given the boot for overly aggressive parking enforcement.

Prankster Note

This is an excellent example of how two-faced Will Hurley of Gladstones Solicitors and the IPC is. Will has spouted off countless times on behalf of the IPC, including on national TV, about how his organisation is all about landowners rights, and how landowners should be able to control parking how they like on their own land.

However, when Will is wearing his Gladstones hat he is perfectly happy to ride roughshod over landowner wishes, ignore their requests to cancel charges and kowtow to the parking operators.

This is of course a poor long-term strategy, and one guaranteed to lose contracts long term - no sensible customer will renew contracts from a service company ignoring their wishes.

The Prankster believes that proper parking management companies do not act in this way and that there is a better way.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

*** Where have we heard that before

PCM-UK signage does not create a contract. Which means most of the IPC signage is effectively useless

Bargepole was in court today at High Wycombe, representing three defendants who had received multiple ticket claims at the estate where they all live. The flats each have one allocated parking space, with permits issued, and the private road has signage stating ‘No Parking At Any Time’. Most of the flats are occupied by couples with two cars, and there was photographic evidence submitted to prove that on any given day, vehicles are parked all along the road.

The cases were:

B4GF26K6 PCM (UK) v Mr B (£914.67 claimed)

B4GF27K3 PCM (UK) v Mr W (£1559.82)

B4GF26K2 PCM (UK) v Ms L (£1067.15)

All the Claimant’s documents had been served by Gladstones, and Bargepole provided defence statements, witness statements and a skeleton argument to cover the three cases, all arguing essentially the same points. The main points of defence were that:

a)      The claimant’s notices attempt to make a forbidding offer, which isn’t an offer at all, therefore no contract exists. Bargepole attached one of CPS’s signs as an example of how a contractual offer could be made by a parking operator, and a copy of the opinion on this from Professor Furmston, author of the contracts textbook.

b)      The charges, which include an additional £50 per ticket (not specified on the signage), are arbitrary and an attempt to penalise motorists

c)      There can be no legitimate interest in issuing charges to residents, who were told at a meeting when this scheme came in that it was aimed at external ‘abusers’. The Beavis test is therefore not satisfied.

The Claimant was represented by Thomas Samuels LLB, MA (Oxon), a barrister from Gough Square Chambers (the same chambers as Jonathan Kirk who represented ParkingEye against Mr Beavis). He handed Bargepole a skeleton in the waiting room, which didn’t raise any new arguments, and was simply a summary of the Claimant’s case. Also present was Georgina Philpot, the PCM employee who had signed their witness statements.

District Judge Glen opted to hear all three cases in a single hearing, as requested by us, and agreed by the other side.

DJ Glen had his own copy of the Beavis judgment in front of him, and was clearly familiar with the case. He started by identifying the main issues to be resolved, which were:

Was there a contract at all?

If so, was the doctrine of penalties engaged, and did Beavis apply?

Could the Claimant recover the additional £50 per ticket, stated on the signage as ‘enforcement action may incur additional costs’.

Mr Samuels presented his case, which was that this was a contractual charge, and that the wording stating ‘if you park otherwise than in accordance with the conditions you agree to pay consideration in the sum of £100 …’. This was, he asserted, a conditional offer. In the alternative, the £100 could also be considered as damages for breach of contract, in which case the Beavis judgment would apply, because PCM have a legitimate interest in enforcement in accordance with the wishes of the landowner. He also submitted that the additional £50 per ticket was covered by the Claimant’s evidence of incurring additional costs of enforcement.

DJ Glen did not allow any cross-examinations, so Bargepole abandoned the planned questions for Ms Philpot, and then presented the defence case.

His arguments were that as the sign stated no parking at any time, there was no offer of parking, and therefore there could be no contract. To support this, Bargepole cited Arrale v Costain, and evidenced an example of a sign from Combined Parking Solutions showing how an offer could be made. He also included the email from Prof. Furmston, confirming the analysis. He then said that if it was held there was a contract, PCM would have no legitimate interest in enforcing charges against residents, as this had never been the purpose of the scheme. Finally he said that whatever the outcome, the £50 was not communicated in clear terms, and would not be recoverable.

The Judge sent everyone out for 20 minutes, then back in for Judgment.

He started by referring to the Beavis transcript, at paras. 94, and 189/190, which made it clear that it was agreed by all parties that there was a contract between PE and Beavis. He said that analysis didn’t apply in this case, as the notice was absolutely prohibitive, and didn’t communicate any offer of parking. The landowners may have a claim in trespass, but that wasn’t under consideration here. He also dismissed Mr Samuels’ suggestion that if the court had copies of the leases, these might oblige the defendants to observe all parking restrictions, as these were not in evidence.

He stated he was dismissing all three claims, and then went on to make observations on other points. He said that the photographs evidenced by the defendants clearly showed that it was a wide roadway, and that parking vehicles on one side would not cause any obstruction. However, if there had been a valid contract in place, he probably wouldn’t have considered the £100 to be a penalty. He also would not have allowed the extra £50 to be claimed, under the contra proferentem rule.

No permission to appeal was sought by the Claimant.

The Defendants were awarded their costs for lost earnings, at £95 each for Mr Bl and Mr W, and £80 for Ms L.

Prankster Note

This decision essentially blows the IPC signage model out of the water, meaning that pretty much all of their car parks will need re-signing. 

It also confirms the Prankster's opinion that the IAS is essentially a kangaroo court. The IAS have been informed many times that IPC signage does not create a contract as the notice is forbidding, but the IAS baristas have proved unable to understand this basic point of contract law.

IPC signage is apparently verified and approved by either Gladstones Solicitors or the IPC.

Professor Furmston is of course the co-author of Law on Contract and his opinion can therefore be though of as compelling, and of far more weight than anyone from Gladstones Solicitors.  

It may be that the IPC companies will therefore have a case against whoever validated their signage in the first place, and can recover the costs of reworking their signage.

Any motorist who has paid a charge in these circumstances may well have a case to sue the parking company to recover the payment. This will of course depend on the exact signage, and the circumstances of parking.

The Prankster hopes the judgment provides much needed clarity for motorists who receive private parking charges. Unfortunately, there have been a number of militant solicitor firms who have caused operators additional costs and worry prior to the judgment in declaring the charges as lawful and enforceable. Hopefully, those firms will now focus their efforts on properly advising operators on how to run a car park to provide genuine management as opposed to pillaging their customers rather than issuing blanket, erroneous, advice that all parking charges are enforceable.

Finally, we should all remember that PCM-UK are the company caught out by BBC Watchdog for making things up during appeals.

Wright Hassall? Right shambles!

Wright Hassall decisions have started to come in.

The first problem is that WH appear to have jumped the gun - motorists still have one day to add to their appeal evidence. The second problem is that some motorists have not received the initial WH letters, so the decision has come out of the blue. The third problem is that the WH assessor is not named...most likely for reasons which will become obvious. The fourth problem is that the assessment does not take the appeal points into account. The fifth problem is that the judgments are exceedingly short and do not even properly consider the appeal points they do cover. Obviously the BPA have not paid Wright Hassall enough for them to spend more than 5 minutes writing up their appeal judgment.

Prankster Note

The POPLA appeals process is now descending into farce. You get what you pay for, and on the above evidence the BPA have paid for a substandard, incompetent service, which is biased towards the operators and therefore demonstrably unfair.

ISPA are currently monitoring the appeals process and have appointed two people to check appeals, so if you have any problems either with the procedures or with the quality and competence of the Wright Hassall assessors you should contact ISPA with your complaint.


Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

Why Landowner Witness Statements are Useless at POPLA

For several years now many parking operators have lied to POPLA to pretend their charge was a genuine pre-estimate of loss. The lie is of course laughable; parking companies make huge profits from their charges, as ParkingEye's accounts show - and of course Capita would not have purchased them for £57.5 million if this were not the case.

Ironically at first ParkingEye used to admit they made no loss from overstays. Here is an early GPEOL explanation they sent to POPLA for Rheidol Retail Park.

Later on, as this lost at POPLA, they invented the fiction that it cost then £55 per ticket issued - a fiction doubly invalid, because even if these costs were allowed they would be impossible based on their own filed accounts.

Now of course, as the Beavis case has changed the way penalties are interpreted, this fiction can be conveniently discarded.

But having been lied to consistently for over 3 years, why on earth would POPLA believe anything a parking company states?

Parking companies have been caught lying time and again regarding their contracts with operaters - not only with POPLA, but also in court. ParkingEye, for instance, redacted the contract in the ParkingEye v Beavis case to hide the fact they were apparently acting as agent of the landowner. This would of course have made the charge invalid, as the landowner instructed ParkingEye to cancel the charge, but they refused.

In this latest case, reported on pepipoo, the operator did produce a contact...which blew their case out of the water. The operator was Horizon and the landowner, Sainsbury clearly did not want over-aggressive parking enforcement, because the contract contained a clause limiting charges for overstays.

"Overstaying the parking time limit for repeat offences, from the second occurrence onwards, when parking within a time allowed restricted car park"

The charge was therefore clearly invalid, and Horizon should never have issued it. However, this begs the question; how many other charges issued over the years are actually invalid, and should not have been issued?

The clear inference is that the boiler-plate landowner witness statements have no legitimacy, and that if operators wish to prove their right to operate a copy of the landowner contract is essential proof. This can of course be redacted with regard to the actual costs, but not the relevant terms and conditions.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster