Free Traffic Legal Advice

If you can show me the word "fine" in any of the correspondence you have received, I will not only pay them for you, I will also give you £1,000. Please stop referring to them as "fines". They are not. They are speculative invoices from an unregulated private parking company for an alleged breach of contract with the driver.

As you are in Scotland, you can safely ignore, for now, Horizon and any debt collector letters. Do not engage with them, especially any debt collectors. Do not, under any circumstances identify the driver.

There is no keeper liability in Scotland, for the time being. Only the unknown driver can be liable. Unlike in England and Wales, under some circumstances, the unknown drivers liability can be transferred to the known keeper. There is no legal obligation on the known keeper to identify the unknown driver.

So, for now, in Scotland, you can ignore Horizon or any other PPC as they cannot hold you, the keeper liable. The burden of proof is on the to show who was driving. The only person that can do that for them, is the keeper. Why would you want to do that?

Even if the drivers identity was blabbed, it is unlikely they would initiate a Scottish court "simple procedure" claim. There simply is no money in it for them as a claim for less than £300 does not attract any costs for the claimant if they are successful.

One very important point to bear in mind is that it is possible for them to take you to court and win, if (a) you admit (e.g. on social media) to being the driver and (b) the total owed exceeds £300. One unfortunate Scottish woman was convinced that such fines were unenforceable in Scotland, and blithely kept parking where she wasn't supposed to. The parking company took her to court, won, and were awarded over £20,000.

To add to this for anyone interested as to the why, the £300 limit is the threshold at which scottish sheriff courts can award costs. So if it's below that amount, the parking company will have to hire a solicitor and pay them, and even if they win all they'll get back is the cost of the initial invoice. So they don't go for court action up here as it'll end up costing them money.

**IMPORTANT EXCEPTION: Sheriffs can award costs for cases below £300 if one party has behaved unreasonably. Which is why advice is generally not to be a dick in proceedings. Angry judges are not a hornet's nest you want to poke.   

There's already a separate act, the provisions relating to keeper liability just haven't been enacted yet.

At first glance it looks broadly similar to PoFA, but smarter people than me will be able to check for differences.

Why on earth did the “Dear Leader”, who so vehemently wants Scottish independence, agree to adopt an English law that uniquely removes a common law right that allows a third party who has not agreed to a contract to be liable for the terms of that contract?

Knowing the corrupt background that most of these cowboy private parking firms originated from, you have to wonder how they managed to lobby for this uniquely English law to be adopted in Scotland. Was the “Dear Leader” easily influenced, possibly by financial incentive?