From the Parking Prankster's blog
MET Parking deceive motorists for years. DVLA stick fingers in ears and make la la la noises
One dogged motorist has unearthed a scam MET Parking have been operating for several years on the Chiltern railway.
Chiltern Railway car parks are railway property and railway byelaws apply. This means that drivers can be fined for breaching the byelaws, and that the fine is backed by statute. The flip side is that the Protection of Freedoms Act (POFA) 2012 schedule 4 does not apply as the car parks are not 'relevant land'; this means that the keeper is not liable - only the driver is. 'I was not driving' is an absolute defence, as long as you can prove this, or the judge believes you on the balance of probabilities if the proof is not conclusive.
However, MET Parking have been issuing huge numbers of tickets, trying to deceive the motorist that keeper liability applies when it does not. Obtaining money by false pretences is a criminal act.
One motorist realised something fishy was happening after he had successfully appealed several tickets to the independent appeals service, POPLA. When he tried to appeal a subsequent ticket, MET Parking said they had withdrawn the right to use POPLA as the ticket was issued under the railway byelaws. The motorist pointed out that this was not what the original charge said, and has been fighting to find the true situation ever since.
He asked the DVLA to investigate. After a few false starts they finally shifted reluctantly into gear, and found that MET Parking were acting incorrectly by stating keeper liability applied. They found that 1025 tickets had been incorrectly issued at the West Ruislip car park since 1 October 2012, which is when POFA 2012 commenced. Of these, 589 were still outstanding, which MET Parking then cancelled. Another 90 had been cancelled following appeals. However, the remaining 346 had already been paid, and the DVLA refused to make MET Parking refund the motorists.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. MET Parking have around 20 car parks on the Chiltern line alone, so the number of incorrectly issued tickets is likely to be tens of thousands, which means that MET parking may have trousered £1,000,000 under false pretences.
The DVLA have to share responsibility for this mes up. Although they told the motorist they only knew of this situation in January 2014, this has turned out to be a lie; freedom of information requests showed they were dithering about what to do back in July 2013, and were fully aware what was going on.
They continued to pass on keeper information to MET parking without attempting to police the situation at all. Although in the past parking companies have been suspended from access for stating that keeper liability applied when it did not, the DVLA have of late taken a more business oriented approach to these transgressions. They now prefer to keep their snouts in the trough and the money flowing in, whatever the parking companies do. Wheras it seems that the DVLA feels a motorist can be penalised £100 for being 1 minute late or have a wheel an inch over a line, the same does not apply for parking companies. Obtaining money under false pretences is perfectly acceptable as long as the parking company keeps the money rolling in. This cannot be right. The DVLA cannot keep absolving themselves of the responsibility to police the sector; there needs to be a balance, which currently is sadly lacking.
Both the BPA Ltd and the DVLA initially tried to bury this complaint and it was only through perseverance that anything happened at all.
The situation remains unresolved, with thousands of motorists out of pocket. It is a sorry state of affairs that civil servants can have such blatant disregard for the rights of motorists and are prepared to turn a blind eye to dodgy goings-on on an industrial scale.
If you have paid a parking ticket to MET Parking at a railway car park between 1 October 2012, and January 2014 then you should write to MET Parking for a refund. If they refuse, then the case officer at the DVLA you need to get in touch with is Liz Symods. If you feel your MP should be made aware what has been going on, then
http://findyourmp.parliament.uk/ is a good reference site.
MET Parking
PO Box 64168
London
WC1A 9BE
Elizabeth.Symons@dvla.gsi.gov.uk
Happy Parking
The Parking Prankster
http://parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/met-parking-deceive-motorists-for-years.html
