Hello Percy, I hope you have not paid up yet. Yes you did break the rules imposed by the centre management. But why should it cost you £25 or £50? You shop at the shops there and if you didn't they would go out of business. The crux is in the phrase Parking Charge Notice, which is only a notional contract between you and the centre owner to park there for 2 hours free and a longer period is chargeable. By breaching the contract all you have done is deprive the centre of a parking space for however long you were over the free period. So if they charge £1.50 per hour and you were 30 minutes late you have technically deprived them of 75p. To force you to pay the 75p they would have to take you to a civil court, which clearly they will not do. A private company cannot impose a PENALTY charge only the Police or a Local Authority can do this and enforce it in the criminal court. They design the PARKING Charge Notices to look and read like a legal charge notice from a proper authority. Please ignore it completely. They will write to you and issue all sorts of threats and then a debt collection agency will write to you with all sorts of vieled threats, but just totally ignore them. They will never take you to court because they can never be successful in proving anything other than you may owe them 75p. I do not advocate a free for all when parking but these parking management cowboys are a menace and they only get paid by squeezing money from unsuspecting motorist. After all aren't the motorist the biggest cash cow in the UK? We are a target for any Tom, Dick and Harry with scam to get money from us. Do not pay and completely ignore them. Do not respond at all. Cheers Concrete

Hi Percy, just updated my experience with private parking companies. See Private Parking Comapnies post update 6/7/10. Don't pay up, you are just feeding their greed. Concrete