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Parking companies need checks
ON the face of it, the three steps to sensible parking enforcement as outlined on Nupark's website appear reasonable enough.
Nupark, to refresh your memory, is the company behind the parking controversy at the White Heather pub in Ferndown where landlady Christine Shade has cancelled more than 800 tickets issued to motorists by the firm she has contracted.
Despite this, Mrs Shade, who is the chairman of Ferndown Chamber of Commerce, says she's happy with the arrangement.
Not so, the owners of the Lynden Court Hotel who have just terminated their contract with Nupark as a story about a Good Samaritan on today's page 7 explains.
Cabbies in the town were urged to boycott the hotel after taxi drivers received invoices simply for dropping off passengers.
The Nupark system works by cameras capturing number plates which are then checked against a list of authorised users held by the company and provided by the client.
Unrecognised numbers will throw up a request for owner details from the DVLA and an invoice is sent out. The flaws are obvious, as evidenced by the events at the White Heather and the Lynden Court.
Nupark and its owner Matthew Brough have attracted publicity elsewhere in the country too and their activities have been raised in the House of Commons.
But they are by no means alone among parking managment operators in generating public concern.
Our newsroom has been inundated with calls and emails in recent weeks about what people perceive to be over-zealous and unfair practices.
High time for some kind of MPs' investigation into just how these firms go about their business.
7:00pm Thursday 4th September 2008
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