In this article, which is part of a series on the 12 stories in the Harrogate district that shaped 2024, we reflect on our reporting of Harrogate District Hospital's parking system.

The Stray Ferret aims to maintain a neutral stance on most issues – we're here to report, rather than to take sides.

But sometimes, in cases where the injustice seems self-evident, we end up nailing our colours to the mast. That’s what happened in August, when we called on the new Labour government to clamp down on unfair hospital parking charges.

We had been contacted by numerous readers who said they had been forced to pay unfair charges by Parkingeye, the company that runs the carpark at Harrogate District Hospital.

The company, which started operating the hospital car park in September 2023, does not receive any money from normal parking fees – its income from the site is derived purely from penalty charge notices, or ‘fines’, and it's making millions from them.

The Lancashire-based firm saw net profits jump by 67% to £15.6 million in 2023, according to its latest accounts filed with Companies House.

Its website says it has “a strong focus on providing ethical parking”, yet many of its “customers” – people using its car parks – use rather different language to describe the company.

Outraged drivers posting on Parkingeye’s page on consumer rating website Trustpilot describe the company as “disgusting”, “unprincipled”, “cowboys” and “scumbags” – and those are just from reviews left within the last week.

Of the 3,200 reviews of Parkingeye left on Trustpilot since 2015, 97% give the company just one star out of five – the lowest rating possible.

Why are people angry?

So why are so many people unhappy with Parkingeye’s business practices?

Complaints against the company appear to fall into two main categories, and in both cases, customers blame the company for not handling their case well or unfairly rejecting their appeal.

The first concerns people who admit they broke the parking rules, but say they had good reason (such as illness or an emergency).

The second involves people who insist that they broke no rules and blame Parkingeye’s technology for issuing a charge they did not deserve. At Harrogate District Hospital, a sum of £70 is demanded, with a reduction to £40 if paid within 14 days.

Technical glitches

So what’s going wrong? Like many car park operators, Parkingeye operates a system based on automatic numberplate recognition (ANPR). A camera records the registration number of each vehicle as it enters the carpark, and the driver can pay in one of two ways: at a machine in the hospital entrance upon leaving the building or via Parkingeye’s Evology mobile phone app.

Many of the complaints relate to failures in the technology – either the on-site machines not working or the app not registering payment.

But while glitches can occur wherever technology is involved, many customers are incensed by Parkingeye’s apparent refusal to accept the fallibility of its devices or to take mitigating factors into account – despite what it says on its website.

One of them is Derek Sendrove from Harrogate. He and his wife Zhanna used the hospital car park when both were receiving treatment.

They had registered their bank card with the Parkingeye app, which is supposed to make it possible to pay for parking via mobile phone.

But on a visit which lasted 44 minutes and should have cost £4, their card was not recognised, even though it had been accepted every other time they had used the car park.

The couple were handed a £70 penalty charge notice by Parkingeye, which Zhanna unsuccessfully appealed.

Mr Sendrove told the Stray Ferret that Parkingeye seemed to be “profiting from their own faulty app”. He took his case to POPLA (Parking on Private Land Appeals), the independent appeals service, but his appeal was rejected and he ended up having to pay.

The problem of self-regulation

In fact, the existence of POPLA as an arbitrator of appeals is in itself contentious. It was introduced by government request in 2012, but was created by the British Parking Association (BPA) – which is itself made up of parking companies including Parkingeye – and is run by a private company.

Although POPLA insists it is independent, the fact that it is paid for by parking companies effectively means the parking industry regulates itself.

This strengthens the case for more effective government regulation.

The Conservative government tried to do this in 2022, with a proposed code of practice that would have capped fines at £50 (half the current minimum) and introduced a compulsory 10-minute grace period at the end of every parking stay.

But the government withdrew the proposals just four months later, after private parking companies issued legal proceedings.

Taking back the initiative, in June the industry’s two accredited trade associations, the BPA and the International Parking Community (IPC) published their own single code of practice., which came into force on October 1.

A spokesperson for Parkingeye said:

But the code of practice is much watered down, and effectively means the sector continues to regulate itself.

Tom Gordon, the Liberal Democrat MP for Harrogate and Knaresborough, told the Stray Ferret in the summer that changes to the parking enforcement and payment systems had caused confusion. He said:

So it seems little has changed in the motorist’s favour since we first wrote about Parkingeye a year ago, and until it does, we shall continue to call for a fairer deal for those visiting Harrogate District Hospital.

Unless, or until, such a change comes about, any new reviewers on Trustpilot might well write the same as the company’s very first reviewer did almost 10 years ago: “Disgusting, avoid at all costs”.