TONY HETHERINGTON: Which? boss staying quiet on parking fiasco

Tony Hetherington is Financial Mail on Sunday’s ace investigator, fighting readers corners, revealing the truth that lies behind closed doors and winning victories for those who have been left out-of-pocket. Find out how to contact him below. 

C.O. writes: I was given a penalty ticket for overstaying the parking time in Greenwich Royal Park. 

I thought it unfair as the pay and display ticket is printed in a most confusing way. 

Also, I consider it blackmail to tell me that by paying the £40 penalty I had no recourse to appeal, while if I took time to appeal, the penalty would become £80. 

Tony Hetherington replies: Let’s start with the basic issue, the layout of the pay and display ticket. And I have to admit that when you sent me a copy, I fell into exactly the same trap as you. 

The ticket has two rows of details, with the top row in large type. The first bit of information is the date, under which is the word ‘DATE’ in capitals. The eye reads from left to right, and the next bit of information says 12:34, beneath which is the word ‘FEE’, also in capitals. But this is not the fee. It is the expiry time. The real fee is lower down on the ticket, diagonally opposite the date and with no caption at all. 

Once this is explained, everything falls into place and you can see what the ticket should say. But I’ll bet that you are not the first person to glance at the ticket, be seriously misled, and then get a penalty demand.

And the misleading information does not stop there. Tickets and demands are decorated with a large crown, representing the Royal Parks Organisation. But the address, phone number and email all go to a private company, NSL Limited. Not surprisingly then, I was told: ‘The Royal Parks has had no previous complaints on this issue.’ Of course not, when everything goes to NSL. 

NSL itself told me: ‘We will of course consider the customer’s feedback and seek to improve the layout when the next batch of tickets is produced.’ But it rejected the idea that the penalty doubles if you appeal. Rather, it said, the penalty is halved if you pay up and do not appeal. 

And this is big business for NSL, so I took a closer look at it. NSL is owned by yet another company, Marston (Holdings) Limited, which in turn is owned by another company, and so on and so on, through an amazing ten layers of companies until you get to the top of the tree, which is Free Flow Topco Limited. 

It has contracts with local councils and government agencies that include enforcing warrants, issuing warning notices, clamping, impounding, and disposing of vehicles. And last year its turnover was £255million. It claims that its Marston offshoot operates within an ‘ethical framework’ headed by an advisory group run by Sam Younger CBE. Who’s he? Astonishingly, he is the chairman of consumer organisation Which? 

No, you have not misread this. Which? – the organisation that provides page after page of website advice about how to fight parking tickets – is headed by a man who works for a company that makes millions out of issuing parking tickets. 

So, I contacted Which? and invited a comment from Sam Younger. Did he believe the confusing layout of Marston’s pay and display tickets met ethical standards? And does he believe it is fair that the time taken to consider an appeal would mean the penalty would double? 

Well, the consumer champion refused to answer. His spokesperson told me to ask for a comment from Marston, the very company that issued the ticket in the first place. She added: ‘Any other positions held by Sam Younger outside of Which? are independent from and not linked to his role at the Consumers’ Association.’

This is close to outright hypocrisy. Sam Younger is at Marston so Marston’s owners can boast that they must be ethically run because they have a top consumer champion on board. If Younger disagrees, why did he refuse to say so? 

Last February, the Government unveiled a private parking code of practice, announcing: ‘Private firms issue roughly 22,000 parking tickets every day, often adopting a labyrinthine system of misleading and confusing signage, opaque appeals services, aggressive debt collection and unreasonable fees designed to extort money from motorists. Apart from their inherent unfairness, these practices damage our high streets, our towns and our city centres. We are determined to bring them to an end.’ 

Fine words, which lasted until June when the whole scheme was withdrawn, leaving motorists open to exactly the same abuses the Government listed in February. Perhaps Which? should campaign to revive the code of practice. Or is it too close for comfort? 

If you believe you are the victim of financial wrongdoing, write to Tony Hetherington at Financial Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TS or email [email protected]. Because of the high volume of enquiries, personal replies cannot be given. Please send only copies of original documents, which we regret cannot be returned.