Report comment

The difficulty with this case is that because it started in the small claims court, there is very little evidence available, and the issues were limited by the initial trail judge, although the Supreme Court have now indicated that other issues raised by Mr Beavis but rubbished in the the initial ruling were perhaps right after all.

So we will get a Supreme Court ruling which will inevitably be applied to all parking cases from now on, regardless of applicability.

The assumption is that without parking enforcement the car park will become abused resulting in carmaggedon. Perhaps this is true, but there is simply no evidence to support this (or at least, none filed). Perhaps instead, there is no need for enforcement at all. Perhaps ParkingEye have just found a clever way to monetize a free car park and ensure they get a hefty profit and the landowner gets £1,000 a week, when in reality there was no problem. Perhaps if the cameras were removed there would be no significant problem at all.

There was actually more evidence to support this alternate point of view. Their lordships mentioned the conditions of parking included not parking in disabled bays without a blue badge and not parking over the line...but these conditions are not enforced in this car park. The car park uses ANPR and there are no warden patrols. Therefore anyone abusing these conditions will not be tickets. Yet there is no reported problem with abuse of disabled bays. Perhaps the signage is enough to ensure compliance. But if so for these, why not for overstays as well. And if a simple sign is enough to deter abuse of disabled bays, why is a £85 charge needed to deter overstays.

A knee-jerk one-size fits all ruling is not appropriate for this case, especially as the ruling will be made on the basis of NO EVIDENCE WHATSOEVER on a great deal of the issues.