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Fraudulent Parking Fines.

Posted on 26th March 2023

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This report on The Sun describes a worrying trend in the UK.

Mr. Carnie parked in a privately managed public car park for 30 minutes on two consecutive days last year, but because the cameras didn't log him leaving the first day, he was fined £100 for 23 hours of parking. If you don't pay the fine, a County Court Judgment can be issued, meaning that debt collectors can come to your home (or place of work) to seize assets (unless you can pay there and then).

The article has little information about the car parking rules (I didn't expect good journalism from The Sun anyway) at Tower Retail Park in Crayford, Kent, but an online search yielded the information that parking is free, with a maximum parking time of 3 hours. There are cameras at the car park, connected to an ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) system, and fines are issued based on the data the system produces.

Mr. Carnie appealed the fine with independent adjudicator "Parking On Private Land Appeals" (POPLA) but was rejected. He also contacted the British Parking Association (BPA) by whom Nexus (the company which manages the car park) are represented, but they also came to "the same conclusion". Since then, however, GroupNexus have now offered to cancel the charge "as a gesture of goodwill". Mr. Carnie is understandably unhappy with this solution, since it implies that he was at fault and that the company has "generously" decided to forgive the debt (this is a bit like accepting a plea deal when charged with a crime you didn't commit).

Some research has shown Mr. Carnie that these mistaken parking fines are extremely common (I found some examples while searching for the parking rules of the car park); it is worth reading the article to see the inconsistencies in the data upon which the fines are based. He is therefore campaigning to have the ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) systems in car parks scrapped "until the data they produce is of a standard that would hold up in court".

The worrying trend that I mentioned in the first paragraph is that people, and courts, now believe that automated systems like ANPR are infallible, and will enforce fines while ignoring any facts that contradict the official narrative. This is akin to the unfounded belief that some people have, that "it must be true, because I read it on the Internet".

Personally, I feel that criminal charges should be brought against Nexus for fraudulent demands for money.