This page explains how to appeal a Parking Charge notice issued by NCP Ltd. NCP are in some ways different to other private car park companies in that NCP lease their car parks.
NCP and court
NCP don’t have a history of taking anyone to court. So your appeal to them fails, then one option is to hold off and ignore the debt collection letters.
A number of people ask this website about the case of the County Court case of James Paul Mayhook versus NCP in Cambridge. The important thing to note here was that it was not NCP taking a driver to court, it was the reverse – a driver taking NCP to court.
A quick summary of the case is provided here, however that is only for the interested reader. There is no need for anyone to read the following.
The case centred around Mr Mayhook who had received a noticed from NCP ordering to stop using their car park as they claimed he had something of the order of 60 tickets. However, Mr Mayhood ignored their request and continued parking at their car park. Eventually they towed his vehicle away and said he couldn’t have it back until he had paid all outstanding amounts. He refused to pay anything and said that he was not driving the case on those occasions and so was not responsible for their payment. NCP kept his vehicle for some 6 weeks before returning it. Mr Mayhook sued NCP in court, won the case and NCP were order to pay him £2,662 as well as 90% of his legal costs.
An important point that came out of the case, and largely resulted in NCP losing the case, was the Unfair Terms in Consumer Contract Regulations, for which NCP’s Terms and Conditions were ruled to be in breach of, and therefore invalid.
Another important point was that of agency. NCP had claimed in their defence that the debts the other driver had rung up had to be paid by M as the other driver was action as M’s agent. But the judge disagreed. To quote counsel from NCP “all the obligations follow”. However, the judge rejected NCP’s submission on this point. He said “I do not see how it can be that if A lends his car to B he gives him the express authority to run up charges in his name by use of the car, whether it is by parking the car, taking petrol for the car, ncurring fines for the use of the car, I do not see that one follows the other as light follows day. I would have thought one would always assume that his sue of the car is not as one’s agent but on his own behalf”.
NCP Debt Collectors
NCP uses debt collection company Debt Recovery Plus Ltd for debt collection to chase payment of their parking fines (the same debt collector that Parking Eye Ltd and and a lot of other private parking companies use).
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