The Protection of Freedoms Act will give Parking Enforcement agencies the right to impose penalties on registered keepers of cars rather than on their drivers, probably from October 2012. But this is still a contractual matter, so if you pay what you "consider to be a reasonable penalty" the parking enforcer has to take you to court to get more money and very probably won't. The statistics are 1,600,000 private parking charge notices issues; 845 court proceedings commenced, 49 actually went to court and the parking enforcers won 25.