Fine To Charge Shoppers Who Overstay Their Welcome

Retail centre owners and their entrepreneurial co-contractors have over the last few years been busy perfecting a method for car-driving customers to find a way to be able to park for free without encouraging the self-same car owners to stay in their parking spot for too long and make it difficult for other shoppers to park.

The typical contractual arrangements are that the owner of the retail centre enters into a contract with the car park management contractors under which they receive regular fixed income and the management company has the right to keep the penalty charges paid by customers who over-stay in the car park. The right to park for free is usually limited to a time period of between 2 and 3 hours. The customers who comply with the parking rules do not have to pay a penny for parking. The management company depends upon a certain number of people breaching the parking rules otherwise it loses money and this gamble on there being a critical mass of customers who will not leave by the required time appears to provide a viable income for the management company.

However, in the recent Court of Appeal case of Parkingeye Limited v Beavis ([2015] EWCA Civ 402) Mr Beavis asked the Court to find that (1) the £85 overstaying charge was unenforceable at common law because it was a penalty; and (2) such charge was unfair and therefore unenforceable by virtue of the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contracts Regulations 1999. If Mr Beavis had succeeded with his appeal there would have been serious repercussions for the car park management world as this model for funding "free" car parking is widespread in retail centres across the land. Ultimately, however, the Court was happy that even though the retail centre owner had not suffered any loss by the overstaying in question, the charge applied to Mr Beavis for...