10-20-2026, 04:20 PM
Am I the only one struggling to see what is genuinely new here?
Informed motorists have been relying on many of these arguments for years. Grace periods, keying errors, broken payment machines, inadequate signage and procedural failures are hardly revolutionary concepts.
The biggest protection available to motorists is always understanding the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. If a parking company fails to comply with the statutory requirements for keeper liability, many motorists quite rightly decline to identify the driver and require the operator to prove its case properly.....and if they can't then their case is fatal.
POFA compliance is binary - if you comply you can legally pursue the Registered Keeper, if you don't then you lose if you're clumsy enough to push on as far as a hearing before a District Judge.
So while a new code may make good headlines, much of it appears to codify arguments that competent appellants were already deploying successfully. The real question is not whether another rulebook exists, but whether there will be meaningful sanctions against operators who ignore it.
Until then, this feels less like reform and more like the Government putting an official stamp on what parking forum regulars have been saying for years.
Informed motorists have been relying on many of these arguments for years. Grace periods, keying errors, broken payment machines, inadequate signage and procedural failures are hardly revolutionary concepts.
The biggest protection available to motorists is always understanding the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. If a parking company fails to comply with the statutory requirements for keeper liability, many motorists quite rightly decline to identify the driver and require the operator to prove its case properly.....and if they can't then their case is fatal.
POFA compliance is binary - if you comply you can legally pursue the Registered Keeper, if you don't then you lose if you're clumsy enough to push on as far as a hearing before a District Judge.
So while a new code may make good headlines, much of it appears to codify arguments that competent appellants were already deploying successfully. The real question is not whether another rulebook exists, but whether there will be meaningful sanctions against operators who ignore it.
Until then, this feels less like reform and more like the Government putting an official stamp on what parking forum regulars have been saying for years.
