Author Topic: Revealed - Parking Cowboys' despicable tactics at NHS hospitals  (Read 1637 times)

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Parking cowboys hit cancer victims: Now scandal of 'disgraceful' fines spreads to NHS hospitals

    Rogue wardens have allegedly been told to focus efforts on cancer wards
    Whistleblower claims he was told to 'give tickets regardless of any illness'
    Politicians and campaigners call for crackdown on rogue parking firms


By Paul Bentley and Sian Boyle and Jim Norton and Jaya Narain

Cancer patients undergoing life-saving chemotherapy are being targeted by ‘cowboy’ parking squads at NHS hospitals, it was claimed last night.

Rogue wardens working on hospital grounds have allegedly been ordered to focus on cancer wards because patients are likely to be distracted – and therefore late returning to their cars.

Hospitals were last night accused of encouraging the ‘disgraceful’ tactic, with some trusts even taking a cut of up to 10 per cent of the parking firms’ huge profits.

Yesterday the Mail revealed how private parking companies were hitting hundreds of thousands of drivers with £100 ‘fines’ for minor infringements outside shops and fast-food chains.

After issuing what appear to be official penalty notices, they then use threats to terrify motorists into paying up.

In many cases, however, the tickets are issued unfairly and without legal authority.

Now a whistleblower from one of the largest firms has revealed the extent to which they use ‘dirty tricks’ to claim money from the elderly and patients who are critically unwell.

Tony Taylor, 53, claims he was told by his bosses that wardens should focus on hospital cancer wards to exploit chemotherapy patients.

He said they were made to ‘give tickets, no matter what, regardless of any illness’ and that they were offered huge bonuses to ‘give the sites a good banging’.

‘When I had to visit the hospital sites, I was told to instruct the wardens to concentrate on the area outside the cancer departments because cars would overstay their time more than any other part of the hospital due to them or their passenger receiving chemotherapy,’ he said.

Mr Taylor says he refused to obey the order and resigned in December.

Last night, politicians and campaigners called for a crackdown on the rogue parking firms, while the Department of Health said it would issue new guidance on hospital parking later this year.

Tory MP Stephen Dorrell, former chairman of the health select committee, said hospitals must investigate the allegations immediately.

‘Any suggestion that there is a pre-meditated policy of targeting groups of vulnerable patients is completely incompatible with the NHS central ideal – to care and support vulnerable people.’

Some hospitals which employ the private firms receive a cut of the money they make from fines.

Ricky Gater, of the Parking Ticket Appeals Service, confirmed that NHS hospitals were among those receiving a ‘kickback’ commission on charges. ‘The incentive for these companies is not to make sure people come in on time and park correctly, the incentive is to earn money.’

Mr Taylor worked as a team leader for UK Parking Control Ltd for two years. UKPC manages car parks for a number of NHS hospitals, shopping centres, Royal Mail and High Street shops including Marks & Spencer, Next and Tesco.

‘They do not care one hoot about anyone’s feelings or health,’ said Mr Taylor, a grandfather who lives in Wrexham with his wife.

The ‘cowboy’ parking wardens are believed to have developed the new way to fleece motorists after clamping on private land was outlawed in 2012 following a Daily Mail campaign.

Their ‘parking charge notices’ – cynically named to replicate official council ‘penalty charge notices’ – do not have the same legal standing as official fines, but are often followed up by threatening letters alleging that drivers could be taken to court.

A Department of Health spokesman said: ‘We are absolutely clear that (NHS parking charges) should be fair and not unduly expensive, and we will be issuing new guidance later this year.’

UKPC last night denied Mr Taylor’s allegations.

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£70 FINE FOR PENSIONER CAUGHT STAYING 13 SECONDS TOO LONG

One pensioner was hit with a £70 parking fine at a local NHS hospital after staying just 13 seconds too long.

Marilyn Heald, pictured right, paid 50p to park for 30 minutes while she had an X-ray at the Samuel Johnson Community Hospital in Lichfield last month.

The 64-year-old from Staffordshire was shocked when a fine for £70 from Parking Eye landed on her doorstep a week later. Cameras had recorded her entering the car park – before she even had a chance to park – at 10.14am and 47 seconds.

It logged her leaving at 10.45am, meaning she was penalised just over £5 for each of the 13 extra seconds.

Mrs Heald said: ‘I have no problem in paying to park at the hospital. I’m all for the hospital making money from it. But I don’t understand why they’re using some car park management company, like Parking Eye, who are just there literally to cash in as soon as they can.’

Mrs Heald appealed and the fine was waived. She said: ‘It seems to me that if you appeal they let you off – that’s what’s happened to lots of people I know. They’re not interested in pursuing it at all, they’re just after catching the poor innocent person who is going to pay up.’

The hospital’s parking system has come in for stinging criticism from patients. One, who gave his name as ‘Rick’ on the hospital rating website NHS Choices, wrote: ‘I think the system installed is pure and simple profiteering, and gives very little consideration to the people who have to use it.’

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Mother who was racing to save baby

A pregnant woman rushed to hospital in fear of losing the second of her twin babies was fined £75 for parking without a ticket.

Kirsty Tierney-Jones was 38 weeks pregnant when she drove in severe pain to Queen’s Hospital in Romford in October last year.

The 33-year-old from Essex, pictured below with the surviving baby, had been struck down with hyperemesis gravidarum – a severe form of morning sickness which Kate Middleton also suffered from during her pregnancy.

The condition had claimed the life of her other twin at just 14 weeks.

Mrs Tierney-Jones was relieved and ecstatic when she gave birth to a healthy girl, Alice-Neve. But three months later she received a parking ticket from Gemini Parking Solutions, which runs the hospital parking.

To add insult, the company refused to waive her fine and threatened to take legal action if she did not fork out.

At the time, she said: ‘It’s absolutely disgusting – my child’s life was at risk and they still want to fine me. My baby could have died. I had already lost her sibling.’

She added: ‘It would have been different if it was an appointment but this was an emergency.’

The company later cancelled the fine.

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THEY TOLD ME I SHOULD HAVE GOT AN AMBULANCE

When Natalie Marshman’s two-year-old son fell seriously ill and began having fits, she rushed him to Ormskirk hospital a couple of miles away.

The 37-year-old parked at the children’s A&E unit and ran inside with her son and eight-month-old daughter. On her return, she was horrified to find she had been given a £60 fine for parking in the drop-off bay.

She said: ‘I was stunned. There was no way I could leave one of my children behind in the car and I had to get my son into the hospital as quickly as possible.’

Her son had an infection of his lymph nodes and needed treatment for the next three weeks.

Mrs Marshman, pictured left, said: ‘I was shocked they would ticket someone who was clearly in an emergency, but they just said: “You should have got an ambulance”.’

The mother of three refused to pay the fine on ‘moral grounds’, but it was increased to £100 and she received threatening letters from UKPC warning her of legal action.

She said: ‘It was causing me and my partner immense stress, so in the end we had to pay.’

Mrs Marshman added that she was relieved the aggressive practices at Ormskirk hospital had been reined in by the management.

‘It was a disgrace,’ she said. ‘Many of these people are very sick and yet they are being targeted by a firm looking to make a profit.’

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Targeted as I recovered from a heart attack

Jenny Harris branded the Parking Eye firm ‘disgusting’ after she was fined £70 because she did not know how long it would take her to recover from a heart attack in hospital.

The 51-year-old from Portishead was struck by sudden chest pains and palpitations while visiting a friend in Burton upon Trent three weeks ago.

Her friend rushed her to Queen’s Hospital and offered to pay for the parking, but under-estimated how long Miss Harris would need medical attention.

The hospital car park, like many, had an automatic number plate recognition system that uses closed-circuit television to identify car registrations.

Visitors are forced to guess the duration of their stay, which is often incorrect, making this method particularly lucrative for parking companies.

In the end, Miss Harris, pictured right, needed several days in hospital to recover – far more than she had paid for. She said: ‘I don’t understand how these people can fine me while I was lying in a hospital bed. They shouldn’t be targeting sick people – it’s disgusting.

‘Part of the reason I had the heart attack was due to high blood pressure and coming home to find a parking fine from my time at hospital shot it straight back up.

‘I can’t believe companies are making money from sick people in hospitals.’

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NO MERCY FOR DAUGHTER WHO WAS SCREAMING IN AGONY

When Linda Wallis’s only child, Mia, woke up one Sunday morning crying in agony with violent stomach pains, she drove her straight to A&E at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth.

Her 15-year-old daughter was due to sit her GCSEs the next day, and Mrs Wallis said both of them were ‘emotional wrecks’ as Mia lay on a drip all night in the children’s ward.

Mrs Wallis, 40, pictured with Mia, had paid for five hours at the car park before being given a pass to display on her windscreen. But when she returned to her car at 8.20am, she found a £60 fine on her windscreen.

She said: ‘I went to the hospital reception to complain but they said it happens all the time, and there was nothing they could do.’

Mrs Wallis refused to pay and PCP Enforcement Agency, registered under the name Parking Collection Ltd, increased the fine to £100. She said: ‘They can take me to court if they want. If they do I’ll tell them the truth – that I was an emotional wreck worried sick about my daughter.

‘These people are vultures – they’re preying on vulnerable people in hospital.

‘After the night I’d had, to have a £60 ticket dumped on you is just devastating. The company won’t engage in verbal communication either, so I haven’t even been able to complain.’

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600 fines a WEEK being appealed

    Anger mounts at how enforcement firms get personal data from DVLA
    Millions of names and addresses are sold to the firms for £2.50 a time
    But officials insist the charge merely covers the cost of the requests

By STEPHEN WRIGHT

More than 600 appeals a week are being made against tickets issued by ‘cowboy’ parking squads.

The number of contested cases – revealed in an official report – is soaring as motorists tire of the zero-tolerance tactics employed by private firms ‘policing’ car parks.

Following yesterday’s parking scandal revelations in the Mail, there is mounting anger over how enforcement companies are getting motorists’ personal data from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.

The DVLA, which holds details of all registered vehicle keepers in the UK, collected £6.7million from private parking companies in 2013/14.

Millions of names and addresses were sold at £2.50 a time, often to firms that levy parking charges on drivers using privately owned car parks at NHS hospitals, supermarkets, shopping centres and even tourist attractions. The DVLA insists it is not profiting from parking enforcement, saying it costs more than £2.50 to process each request.

But campaigners say parking on private land has grown into a lucrative industry, involving the private and public sector, with drivers left massively out of pocket.

Motorists’ growing fury over the ‘cowboy’ parking scandal is laid bare in last month’s annual report of Parking on Private Land Appeals (POPLA), an independent tribunal which adjudicates on parking disputes.

It revealed that last year there were 25,214 ‘valid appeals’ registered with the body, which was set up in 2012. Of these, 23,500 appeals were decided, of which 10,661 (45.4 per cent) were allowed and 12,839 (54.6 per cent) were rejected.

Henry Michael Greenslade, lead adjudicator at POPLA, says in its annual report: ‘It is interesting to consider that in the financial year 2013/14… the DVLA received some 10.2million electronic requests for vehicle keeper details from local authorities, police, government departments and Transport for London. During the same period, the agency received some 2.2million electronic requests for vehicle keeper details from private parking operators.’

Mr Greenslade said POPLA was receiving more than 600 appeals a week, and in the middle of last year, ‘unfortunate delays’ had arisen in the time taken to get cases before an assessor because of the number of appeals being filed.

Essentially, anyone who can ‘demonstrate reasonable cause’ can apply to get keeper details from the DVLA.

Parking enforcement operators who are members of an accredited trade association (ATA) also get the right to apply for the information by electronic means. Otherwise they have to write on each occasion they want data.

Professor Stephen Glaister, of the RAC Foundation, told the Mail: ‘What a lot of rogue operators will do is simply play the percentage game.

‘Rather than bother to write to the DVLA to request keeper details, with the possibility they will get turned down because either they cannot show reasonable cause or they are not members of an ATA, they will simply slap loads of tickets on cars in the expectation that many people will simply pay up. An industry estimate is that about 40 per cent of people pay up without bothering to check the legitimacy of the ticket.’

The DVLA says it charges £2.50 for supplying a driver’s record, but the cost of providing the data is £2.84.

In response to a series of questions from the Mail, a DVLA spokesman said: ‘Information is only provided under strict controls to parking firms who meet the standards set by an appropriate ATA and are compliant with its code of practice.’

The spokesman said that while the DVLA earned £6.7million from private parking companies in the past year, the cost of providing the data was £7.6million. She added: ‘DVLA sets fees to recover costs – we do not aim to make a profit.’

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http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2709056/Parking-cowboys-hit-cancer-victims-Now-scandal-disgraceful-fines-spreads-NHS-hospitals.html





Offline Ewan Hoosami

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Re: Revealed - Parking Cowboys' despicable tactics at NHS hospitals
« Reply #1 on: 29 July, 2014, 02:57:03 PM »
The Bullshit Purveyors Association feel slightly miffed at having their member's questionable business practices appearing in the national press. They have written a stiff letter on a piece of cardboard and sent it to the editor,

http://www.britishparking.co.uk/News/bpa-responds-to-daily-mails-cowboy-jibe

The story has also been made the subject of this weeks Tuesday Twaddle,

http://www.britishparking.co.uk/Blog/monday-musing-youre-out-of-bullets-daily-mail/642

I'm kind of sensing that the BPA Ltd disapprove of motorists parking selfishly around hospitals and then expect special treatment by waving the cancer card. Tsk tsk! The BPA Ltd are also still complaining that the nasty horrible government stopped BPA Ltd members from clamping ever so suddenly and for no apparent reason. I would be inclined to try and explain it to them but it's a lot like playing chess with a pigeon…………………

Appealing to the council is like playing chess with a pigeon. You might be a chess grand master but the pigeon will always knock all the pieces over, shit on the board and then strut around triumphantly.

 


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