Free Traffic Legal Advice

Courts would take a dim view of deliberately taking a case to court when it could have been avoided.
Writing to tell them you’re not paying and why is evidence to back up your case that you didn’t do this.
Using the courts out of vindictiveness does not seem like a good strategy to me. You’re better spending your effort complaining to their employers - the supermarket - and threatening to withdraw your custom unless they do something about it.

Your frustration is understandable, but going into a case with the primary objective of causing the other party 'pain' is generally unwise. Consider 2 scenarios...

Scenario 1
You receive a parking charge notice as a result of a 'double dip'. Confident that the charge has been incorrectly issued, you respond to ECP by way of an appeal, briefly setting out your evidence and explaining that the charge is not owed. They either accept this and cancel, or reject. If they reject, you appeal to POPLA, setting out the same evidence and explaining that the charge is not owed. POPLA either accept this and cancel, or reject. If they reject, ECP may then proceed to court. At this point, you submit a defence and Witness Statement, setting out your evidence, and also drawing attention to the repeated attempts you have made to resolve the matter, and drawing attention to ECP ignoring your compelling evidence and ploughing on with a hopeless case.

Scenario 2
You receive a parking charge notice as a result of a 'double dip'. Wanting to inflict pain on ECP, you do not engage with the matter, with the hope that they will take you to court. When they eventually do, you suddenly produce evidence you have previously not shared, showing that you do not owe the money. Up until this point, ECP are unaware of the technical error that has occurred.

Which of the 2 scenarios do you think would yield the best chance of you convincing a court to award you costs on the basis that ECP have behaved unreasonably?

If you appeal, and show them clear evidence that you don't owe the money, and they still take you to court, you'd have a fair argument that they have behaved unreasonably and should pay costs. If you don't engage, ECP could argue that a not insignificant part of the reason it has ended up in court is because you took no steps to resolve the matter prior to it going to court.

And when you say the court would take a dim view, how can this affect the driver?

If a judge takes the view that a party to litigation has behaved unreasonably, he can award costs to be paid by the party that has behaved unreasonably. In theory, a party can 'win' their case and still be deemed to have behaved unreasonably. It's quite a high bar, but why take the risk?

You could also look into misuse of personal data and making a claim for this, although this would be somewhat out of the remit of this forum. Again here though, in my view any such claim would be made stronger by showing that you had taken steps to inform them that they should not have accessed and now be continuing to process your data.

How do you know that they have recorded continuous CCTV coverage?

I think it’s more likely they have ANPR cameras which recognise a car number plate and record it along with a time stamp and a snapshot picture. Or, in your case, don’t.

In which case you’d be asking for something they don’t have.

Can you find others in a similar situation so you can jointly petition the supermarket?

Well with the supermarket its the usual situation. The manager is probably about as annoyed with ECP as we are, and last time we went in was apologetic, saying how frustrated she was with the situation which happens daily but was powerless to do anything about it. Clearly head office need pressure but maybe this is a country wide thing.

At the minimum ECP need to upgrade their equipment - this really is harassment now, when I open a letter and its one of these, it genuinely causes me distress, elevation of BP and stress and it stays that way until I realise its incorrect. At that point it turns into some degree of 'displeasure' with ECP. Since this is a reoccurring theme I would like it to stop and for ECP to cease and desist harassing us for spending money in this supermarket. I must add, its our sole supermarket and as a family with teenagers who eat a lot we spend something like £6-7k a year there. I don't expect to be treated like this at this establishment.

So whats my best course of action? I am fairly sure that you guys on this forum are sympathetic to my complaint, from previous experience on the older forum. I'm fairly sure you understand my desire to vex the operation of ECP both for long previous and current insults. We were planning on following through fully, going to court etc but if you advise this is not the best course of action, what is - not to make this go away asap, quite the opposite, to drag it out and make ECP spend as much administrative time on it as possible. Even at fair cost to ourselves.

Thanks once again for your comments.

supermarkets are likely to look at the balance of PR vs revenue from these parking operators

In our anecdotal experience supermarkets are often some of the most responsive in terms of getting parking charges cancelled for genuine customers. Contacting them is always the best starting point.

I am done with filing complaints BTW, I don't believe it has any effect whatsoever.

Single complaints, perhaps, volumes of complaints add up. It is those motorists making a noise (in part through complaints) that kicked the government into action with their much delayed Private Parking bill.

The purpose of this part of the forum is to advise people who wish to challenge parking charges they have received. Our advice is focused on the steps a motorist can take within the system as it stands to get their charge cancelled as quickly and cheaply (both in terms of money and time) as possible. The quickest way to do that is to get the supermarket to cancel it. The second quickest way is to appeal. If you provide good evidence, you have a good chance of getting it cancelled long before court.

If people want to take up the good fight and push for change, that's their call, and I applaud them for doing so. If you want to change the system such that there is stronger regulation of the industry, you should encourage your MP to do what they can to progress the introduction of the Private Parking Bill, preferably not watered down.

Them spending £35 initiating a court claim they inevitably discontinue won't make them change. The government properly regulating the industry just might.

They were clamping vehicles until government outlawed it.

In my view, the priority with individual cases should always be to get the charge cancelled. Once that's done you can pick up the 'good fight'.

In my view, the way to fight the good fight is as I've already said. Lobby your MP, file complaints, build up your knowledge and become a regular on here - I've made far more of a dent in the coffers of private parking companies by offering advice on here (and PePiPoo before this) than I ever have handling my own parking charges.

I don't mean to sound defeatist, but with individual cases there's probably not much that will tie them in knots. When you're issuing 5,000 charges per day, you conduct your business using templates. The best way to fight them is long term, trying to force change to the industry.

As I noted at the start, you could try and sue for misuse of data. That's your choice to make and is not risk free. It would essentially be a GDPR/Data Protection claim, which isn't in my immediate sphere of knowledge.