Hi Tesla Owner's Club members, I'm not an owner myself (petrol-head, I'm afraid), but on Thursday my wife and her friend both received £100 invoices for parking at the Dragonfly Hotel in King's Lynn, and I want to cause Civil Enforcement Ltd as much of a headache as I can, so here I am.
I have also made a complaint to the Dragonfly Management, both in writing (on Thursday) and in person (yesterday) demanding that they take action to cancel these tickets as my wife and her friend were paying guests at the hotel on the date of the parking 'violation', but so far I have not had a satisfactory outcome from them.
As my username suggests, I'm a retired cop who served in this part of Norfolk. As such, I have a pretty good understanding of the law, both criminal and in respect of civil trespass, unspoken contracts and parking in both the public and private domain. I also like to be a thorn in the side of anyone who tells me 'rules is rules' without having read them themselves, or that it's more than their job's worth to sort out a problem they've caused.
So, with that in mind, if you have received a Parking Charge Notice from Civil Enforcement for charging your car at The Dragonfly Hotel in King's Lynn, or even just for parking there without following the rules on the signs - of which there really are so many now that the Hotel reception looks like the Headquarters of NCP Car Parks (which I find very unwelcoming for a 'hospitality' business) -
you should challenge it whether you complied with the rules on the signs or not, for the following reasons:
1/ Charging your vehicle at a power point does not fit the legal definition of 'parking' so you cannot be made to pay for parking your car.
The legal definition of parking was determined by Lord Greene in
Ashby v Tolhurst (1937). (in law, the older a legal precedent is the better as it means it's been tried and tested many times in different cases). His Lordship's judgement was that, in order for a car to be 'parked' you have to take it to a place and leave it there.
So, just as when someone takes their ICE car to a petrol station to fill it up they have no intention of leaving it there, when you take your EV to a charging station to top up your battery, you also have no intention of leaving it there, no matter how long it takes to charge (although I would suggest that the 20 minute top-up that the forum member who received this unexpectedly shocking charge (pun intended) is good evidence that they had no intention of leaving their car in that place).
2/ It is not possible to comply with the Parking Terms and Conditions as displayed on the signs at The Dragonfly Hotel, King's Lynn, because the Dragonfly Hotel is not adhering to those terms and conditions themselves.
As you can see from the signs below, Dragonfly Hotel guests/visitors must obtain a parking permit at the hotel reception. I parked in their car park yesterday, read the signs, walked in to their reception and asked for a parking permit.
They told me they don't provide parking permits.
Instead, you are required to read an enormous freestanding hoarding (taller and wider than me, which is saying something) which is sideways on at the reception desk so you can't see what's written on it until reception point it out to you, which tells you that you have to locate a touchscreen the other side of a partition wall and enter your registration or receive a £100 charge for breaching the parking conditions.
As the phrase 'obtain a parking permit' is using the word permit as a noun rather than a verb, as it would be in the phrase 'I permit you to park here', the parking permit referred to on the signs is a physical document, and the Hotel do not provide guests with such a document, so are in breach of the parking conditions they themselves have agreed on.
It was interesting to read that the initiator of this thread appears to have been told in writing that they should have obtained their physical parking permit from the Hotel before venturing onto the site, but how do you do that when, a) the sign outside tells you you're supposed to read and comply with the parking conditions signs inside the site, and b) the permits don't actually exist?
Additionally, failing to obtain a written permit to enter private land before doing so would represent a civil trespass, for which the landowner could file a case at a Civil Court, not automatically send you a £100 charge in payment for parking, so Civil Enforcement cannot legitimately issue a Parking Charge Notice to anybody for failing to comply with the sign at the entrance (permit holders only).
Interestingly, the first three signs that greet you when you enter the site all say the same thing, and that is '
Absolutely No Parking'.
That's clear enough to me, they're on the approach to the car park and form one of the conditions that you are accepting by entering, so you must not park at the Dragonfly Hotel or Civil Enforcement WILL send you a £100 Parking Charge Notice with accompanying threats. I have informed the Hotel Manager in writing that Civil Enforcement can legitimately charge him (or her), and everybody else parking in their car park, £100 per day for breaching that particular condition, but I haven't yet had a reply.
Anyway, quite why The Dragonfly Hotel, King's Lynn felt it needed to form a business relationship with these parking parasites is beyond me. The hotel is sited on a small industrial estate on the outskirts of a small Town that Jeremy Clarkson once described as being 'famous for being nowhere near anywhere else'. The hotel is more than a mile from the Town centre and railway station, so nobody in their right mind is going to park there and walk into Town, and there's plenty of free or cheap parking in Town anyway if you know where to look.
If you are a guest or visitor, your contract is with the Hotel, not the parking company, so Civil Enforcement are charging Dragonfly Hotel customers on behalf of the hotel. As such, of course the Hotel Manager should be able to revoke an invoice for payment (which is what the notice is) and I would encourage anyone who gets one to demand that the Hotel deals with it rather than expecting its customers to appeal themselves (while also appealing it yourself as they'll clearly ignore you). The idea is to make life so uncomfortable for the Hotel management that they'll sack their parking company.
I would also encourage anyone else who has received a Civil Enforcement Ltd. Parking Charge Notice for parking anywhere at all and which states on it that the breach relates to 'Permit Holders Only' to check at the venue where they got it if you can actually get a permit, and if the answer is 'no, it's all done online' as it was for me yesterday, then challenge the invoice on that basis.
As far as I can see, all that The Dragonfly gets out of the deal they have with these bullying parasites is an awful lot of hostile signs on their land, a reception that is now dominated by Car Parking Conditions signs and a looming PR disaster, as it's their regular customers, like my wife and her friend, both NHS key workers, who are least likely to be looking for signs threatening financial penalties for parking in breach of the small print when they visit a hospitality business they've been using for twenty years without ever having to register their cars before.
Finally, good luck to anyone who challenges one of these unfair Parking Charge Notices, and I'll be back with news of how our appeal goes once it's sorted.
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but anyone who has visited the place to charge, fined, or not could comment on how confusing it is. Would not take that many comments to drag their rating down.
