Beavis not applicable to paid parking case

From: Mark

In August 2018, we parked in a car park operated by Smart Parking Ltd and paid £5 for 3 hours. We were there for just under 3 hours. A week later Smart Parking sent a demand for £100 on the grounds that the vehicle’s VRM had not been entered into the payment machine correctly. This seemed unreasonable as we had paid £5 and Smart Parking had kept the money, so we refused to pay.

After almost a year of harassment, involving threats from debt-collection agencies on a monthly basis, Gladstone Solicitors wrote to us citing Parking Eye-v-Beavis. We wrote back saying that as Mr Beavis had overstayed his permitted time in a free car park and we had paid in a pay car park, Parking Eye-v-Beavis did not apply. We have not heard from Gladstone Solicitors, Smart Parking, or any of their debt-collection agencies for over six months.

It is possible that the private parking companies are unwilling to test in court how widely applicable Parking Eye-v-Beavis is, and the threat of challenging its applicability to a given case might be enough to put them off.

I hope this is of use to someone.

Thanks, Mark. This should provide a useful line of attack for anyone else in a similar situation.

PC