Parking News is its membership journal published eleven times a year for the BPA by Cambridge Publishers Ltd.[6] The association publishes a list of its members and assets; there are currently 750 corporate members as of 2022,[7][8] which include manufacturers, suppliers, private car park operators, local authorities, health authorities, universities and colleges, airports, privately owned railway operating companies, shopping centres, bailiffs, debt collectors and consultants.
The purpose of the scheme is to raise the standard of safety, security, design and operation of UK car parks.
However, if non-compliance to the Code is proven, it leads to sanctions being temporarily applied and could ultimately result in the member being suspended or expelled from the scheme.
[26] Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 allows parking operators to recover charges from vehicle keepers if certain conditions are met.
4 para 3., the law allows the operator to recover any unpaid parking charges from the keeper of the vehicle, providing the requisite conditions are met.
[33] At the official launch of POPLA, then Parliamentary Under Secretary of State for Transport Norman Baker welcomed the first annual report and the success of POPLA stating "This report shows that motorists are using this new free appeals service in significant numbers and, in more than half of cases, having their appeals upheld.
[25] Operators do not have legal power to issue fines or penalties as a result of people parking on private land, as this is classed as misrepresentation of authority.
There was never any suggestion that the appellant was other than a truthful witness.In August 2010, the Coalition Government announced their intention to ban clamping on private land.
The next two years saw the development and subsequent Royal Assent of the Protection of Freedoms Act[43] which bans all forms of immobilisation without lawful authority.
The BPA welcomed the change as a move to marginalise rogue clampers, but felt that the legislation took away a valuable form of enforcement for landowners to use in the protection of their land.
In order to ensure that private enforcement remained with a robust solution, the BPA's discussions with Government resulted in a form of keeper liability being introduced with the Protection of Freedoms Act,[43] allowing the private operator in England and Wales to pursue the registered keeper of a vehicle if a named driver cannot be traced or denies liability.
On 10 July 2012, Martin Cutts of the Plain Language Commission made a speech at an event delivered by Landor Publishing[45] "The Enforcement Summit '12" which was attended by some BPA executive membersI try to be fair but I've reluctantly formed the opinion that the BPA lacks the standards of integrity normally required of a Government-accredited trade association.
My main evidence for this is what the BPA told the Government as it campaigned successfully to change the law on registered keeper liability.
The Government printed these figures twice as part of its evidence-base in the official impact assessment on the new law, swallowing the BPA argument whole.
The answer to a Freedom of Information request has shown that in 2011 only 845 cases from BPA private members were registered in the court system, and only 49 of them went before a judge for a final hearing.
The suspension was put in place as a result of CPS breaking the DVLA's rules on signage for privately issued parking tickets.
Private parking companies use this database to find out who the registered keeper is of vehicles they wish to issue a ticket to so that they can send out demands for payment.
Further to this, the DVLA has confirmed that CPS will not be able to retrospectively gather this data after the suspension ends or via another parking company.