Private parking rules review prompted by £2,000 five-minute fine

Private parking companies have pledged to update their rules to ensure drivers are not penalized if they fail to pay for parking within five minutes. This move comes in the wake of an incident last year where a driver, Rosie Hudson, was pursued for £1,906 in fines after exceeding five minutes to pay for parking in Derby.

Ms. Hudson received 10 parking tickets over a few days as she had left her car to find a mobile signal to use an app to pay for parking. Now, two industry bodies have stated that they will revise their codes of practice to “protect genuine drivers” and “reflect technological advances.”

The British Parking Association (BPA) and the International Parking Community (IPC) have announced that a panel will revise the private parking industry’s code of practice to ensure it "protects genuine drivers who have difficulty paying promptly on arrival." The BPA stated that the first priority will be an urgent review of Ms. Hudson’s case, which has been referred to as the five-minute payment rule.

The BPA stated that the guidelines revisions concerning payment difficulties will come into effect in February 2025, with a full review expected to be completed by April of the following year. Ms. Hudson was one of several people who were sued by private car park operator Excel Parking. Last December, Excel dropped its case against her without explanation, and did the same for Gary Kay, who had parked in the same Derby car park and was facing a £255 fine.

An analysis of government data by the RAC Foundation found that private parking companies issue an average of 41,000 parking tickets each day. With each ticket potentially reaching £100, this means the maximum total revenue from fines would amount to £4.1 million daily. A bill to introduce a government-backed code of practice for private parking companies received Royal Assent in 2019, but was withdrawn in June 2022 due to legal challenges from parking firms.

The code included a £50 cap on most fines, a grace period for late payments, and a fairer appeals system. In June of this year, the BPA and IPC released their own code of practice, which will be overseen by the new panel. BPA chief executive Andrew Pester said that the move to introduce the panel shows that private parking companies are “serious about raising standards and making decisive changes to the code when things go wrong.”

IPC chief executive Will Hurley stated that the panel “demonstrates the industry’s determination to improve our industry’s reputation.”

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