Alleged overstay in Morrisons' car park leads to solicitor attempting to collect "fine" from regular customer

I have received a letter from a solicitor advising they are acting on behalf of their client, CP Plus Ltd who manage a local car park for Morrison's Supermarket. They claim that my vehicle was parked in the car park for a period of 2 1/2 hours on a particular day and a Parking Charge Notice was issued and not paid. The letter now states if I do not pay the fee that they will issue court proceedings against me without further notice!! This is the first I have heard of the ticket, but I do shop at Morrisons. Can you help and advise me what will happen if I dispute and don't pay the fee?

This is a private car park and you have not committed any offence by parking there, rather they are probably attempting to claim under contract law: by parking in Morrisons' car park you probably agree to a time limit of (say) 2 hours and if you overstay that limit the contract probably states that you assent to pay an additional charge. The terms of the agreement - including the additional charge - must be prominently displayed on notices on the car park for you to assent to the agreement. The company CP Parking are probably paid by Morrisons to look after the car park and they probably regard any overstay fees they can collect as a windfall bonus but they will particularly wish to maintain their relationship with Morrisons as this is more financially important to them nationally.

In that regard I would suggest a two pronged robust approach to your problem: you should write to the store manager in a suitably outraged condition saying you and all your family (bring in mother, friends and relatives into the argument if you wish) are all regular customers, with you personally spending £X00 a week (enter figure) on groceries, and you are deeply upset that their parking contractor has set a solicitor on you without even the courtesy of giving you a ticket or any opportunity of defence or reply. You should demand that they instruct CP Parking to withdraw the ticket, that CP instruct the solicitor to write to you formally withdrawing the threat of legal action and everyone issues a heartfelt apology.

It might help if you add that unless you receive a positive response you will be reporting CP Parking to both the the British Parking Association (of which they are a member) and the DVLA as attempting to collect money without issuing a warning notice at the time is a clear breach of both their codes of conduct. Furthermore state that you will be seeking that the DVLA strike out CP Parking as one of their approved parking companies and thus authorised to receive registered keeper details of car owners for this serious breach of their code, terms and conditions.

You should close with questioning whether a reputable company such as Morrisons should be associated with a contractor who quite clearly fails to comply with industry-standard codes of practice.

At the same time you should send a covering letter and a copy of the letter to Morrisons to both the solicitor concerned and also to CP Parking, 10 Flask Walk, London, NW3 1HE demanding an acknowledgement of receipt within seven days and a response within 14 days. You state that response should include an apology and an acknowledgement of their withdrawal of any further action from both of them.

If they do not respond as you would hope, come back to us and we will contact the DVLA and BPA with regard to the case on your behalf.

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