Parking a car really doesn’t have to be so difficult

The essential joy of owning a car is its amazing ability to get you from A to B quickly and efficiently. But when B is a car park the fun too often comes to an abrupt halt. 

Parking a vehicle in this country has evolved into a complete nightmare over recent years, and a chief cause is companies and organisations who’ve come to view their car parks as less of a service for customers and more of a revenue stream to be exploited.

In the past, parking a car was rarely more complicated than putting some coins in a machine and a ticket on your windscreen. Today, we have to battle with mobile phone apps, input car registrations and run the gauntlet of ANPR cameras. If we get any of it wrong, the trouble really starts. 

Stray even slightly from the parking rules – which will be helpfully provided in unintelligible legal language and excruciatingly small print on a sign hidden up a pole – and drivers are ushered into a new world. A world of clamps, penalty charge notices, unanswered telephone contact numbers and heavy-handed debt collection agencies. It’s enough to make you want to stay at home. 

Against this background, the Government’s new Parking Code of Practice, laid out in Parliament last week, is very welcome. It’s packed with ground-breaking ideas such as scrapping charges on appeal for honest mistakes, such as stopping briefly to check directions, and for situations such as a medical emergency, breakdown or a broken ticket machine.  

It’s a sign of some real regulation being brought to bear on the car-park operators who seem to have surrendered completely to the all-powerful profit motive. Parking rules are essential, but people trying to park their vehicles should not be viewed as a resource to be exploited. They are customers, visitors, residents, the people trying to get from A to B that ultimately keep businesses and the economy going.

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