New considerations on parking charges

Managers struggling to deal with illegal parking should consider the recent case where the Supreme Court upheld that a parking charge was enforceable. After much confusion and debate over whether a secondary charge to be paid on breaching an agreement is a penalty, and therefore unenforceable, the court has clarified that it is not considered a penalty. The long-running dispute between Beavis and ParkingEye was part of a combined case heard in the court and concluded that ParkingEye had a legitimate case to charge £85 for breach of a contract (in this case over staying the maximum stay period in a car park). Whilst managers can take this news as a positive step towards charging those who break rules, care needs to be taken that any fee is not considered to be excessive and penalising beyond the actual loss incurred. The court did not give any indication of what an unreasonable charge may be.