A parking firm is offering people a tenner to shop drivers using a phone app.
The firm which operates car parks for McDonalds, Halfords, Tesco and the NHS is handing out a £10 commission to increase parking “fines” dished out to hard-pressed drivers.
All users have to do is take and upload a picture
of the parked car to UK Car Park Management, along with its
registration number.Until now firms such as this have relied on employing their own private traffic wardens or installing Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) cameras.
It is the latest move by the money-spinning private parking industry which has been criticised for making huge sums from motorists over minor driving misdemeanours.
Defiant CPM boss James Randall, 32, said: “The problem is not with the app but with drivers that do not respect people’s land.
“The photo uploaded to the app is just the evidence and every one is looked at by a member of staff before a ticket is printed.”
Users of the app are given “complete confidentiality” when using the app to report drivers and claim £10 for every paid ticket.
Offending drivers are sent a letter demanding £60, which rises to £100 after 14 days without payment.
The “quick and discreet” service lets any land or business owner register online and allows them or their staff to start dishing out their own parking charges.
The RAC has blasted the scheme as a “recipe for disaster” and could lead to fights between drivers and app users photographing their vehicles.
RAC spokesman Simon Williams said: “This is wrong on so many levels it beggars belief.
“The sharp practices of parking companies are already regularly called into question with paid officials dishing out fines, but with members of the public being financially encouraged to shop motorists who overstay, it’s a recipe for disaster.
“This will cause total chaos by undermining trust still further and may even lead to public order offences between drivers and members of the public looking to earn a quick £10.”
Edmund King, president of the AA, said: “We hoped that outlawing cowboy clampers would have got rid of these sharp practices but it seems that some of the modern day highwaymen are alive and well.
CPM was founded in September 2010 by managing director James Randall, aged 32, and sales director Lukhbir ‘Lucky’ Gohler, aged 31.
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| (Photo: Dave Hill / Daily Mirror) |
RAC spokesman Simon Williams added: “This can only be seen as a cost-cutting move from a private parking company trying to reduce its employee overheads by incentivising the public to do the job instead.
“Surely this private parking company’s fees and fines are high enough to merit proper employees.”
Official-looking parking ‘charges’ on private land of usually around £100 are not legal fines but a bill for breach of contract.
CPM offers its “free” services to residential and commercial landowners by pocketing cash levied to motorists.
Prime Minister Theresa May has been blamed for the law change which unleashed the multi- million pound industry while serving as Home Secretary. Her Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 enabled private parking firms to launch civil cases against a registered keeper via the County Courts in England - even if they could not prove who was driving a vehicle.
The law spawned soaring numbers of private parking firms requesting information from the DVLA so they can chase motorists for fines.
Before then such tickets could be ignored.
Around four million records of vehicle details were handed to parking companies between 2016 and 2017 by the DVLA which pockets £10 million a year in return for them.
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