Drivers could be banned from parking on pavements across the country under new Government plans The ban has already been in place in London for the past 40 years, where motorists are barred from pavement parking unless expressly permitted by the local authority But ministers are now considering rolling it out across the country with potential fines of up to £70 for those who fall foul of the measures. The Department for Transport is considering overhauling the rules to bring the rest of the country in line with the capital. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2016/04/18/drivers-face-pavement-parking-ban/

Hi all! I have been reading through alot of threads to gain info. We have a problem with a builder, who was supposed to do approx £27k of work on our house. I will keep details sketchy as I don't want to identify ourselves. he was a cowboy, didn't do the work as he was contracted to do (we had no written contract, but the Surveyor had specified what needed to be done and how and the quote referred to "all works as detailed in the surveyor;s report). To cut a long story short, he has had two attempts to fix the roof, and has only made it worse both times, and it is now falling apart instead of renovated. We will have to completely re roof it now as its not viable to try to fix it anymore. There are other jobs that were done and also all wrong for varying reasons. We had taken legal advice, had the original surveyor in twice to assess the property and works and draw up a scotts schedule. The work he has done was considered as £0 value due to not being what was supposed to be done and shoddy work. The damages to our property soar at over £60,000, certified by both the FRICS surveyor and conservation. Including legal expenses and other fees the claim against him will be over £70,000. He has chased us with 3 debt collection companies so far, one whom sent out a Liverpool gangster to deliver a Statuatory demand against us to try to bankrupt us. I have proof of who he was, as for some reason when I explained what the builder had done to our house, he claimed to be a "surveyor" and told me he could survey the damages for us, and wrote his number and name down. When i googled him and found his image and name I found out who he really is. -none of the debt collectors have been told by him its a disputed debt. -The first debt agreed to wait until a certain date to get the scotts schedule and evidence, but before that date came around, the next was pursuing us vigorously. -The second debt collector refused to contact our solicitor despite being told to only converse via him and repeatedly texted us and phoned us saying they were going to bankrupt us. -Our solicitor tried to call them but his calls went unreturned and he had to email them to ask them to desist harrassing us and only converse via him. -Then they sent letters threatening SD against us, and when contacted AGAIN by our solicitor for continuing to ignore the direction to speak via our legal advisor, claimed they never received his "letter", (even though it was an email!) -We forced them to set aside the Statutory demand, by furnishing the evidence and he was dropped like a hot potato by the bulldog debt collectors and that was the last that we heard from anyone for approx 8 months, until we got a letter a few days ago, from yet another. -I have recording software on my phone so made sure i used it when I called this debt collection company. We haven't got the solicitor involved again as yet, as we don't want to part with yet another £500 to get rid of these guys. I had a list of qurestions which i calmly repeated: "has your client told you this is a disputed debt? -has your client told you that you are the third debt collector he has gotten on to us? -has he told you he issued a statutory demand against us which they had to set aside when the evidence was furnished -has he told you we have proof of a £70,000 AGAINST HIM? etc... She said she didn't have a record that he had told them it was a disputed debt but would get the case manager to call us back, which hasn't happened yet. -Also I'll mention the claim of monies owed started at around £15,000, and each time the amount has changed and risen and now he's claiming theres over £25,000 outstanding, which is absolute balshovic! He's just making up amounts and doesn't actually KNOW what the actual amount would have been had he done a satisfactory job. Our solicitor said should we take this to court we must be aware it will cost us at least : -£2500 filing fee with court -£10 - 15,000 of solicitor, barrister and court costs in the year it will take to get to court, and thats before the case is heard. The evidence is overwhelming and I feel we would blow him out of the water should we try the case, but our solicitor is concerned that we will get a win, but get no funds out of him as he doesn't really have company assets the tracing agent could identify, and the company has a £150,000 debt against it. ..The only upside is, he said the banks wouldn't let a builder run up such huge amounts of debt unless they had it secured against something , and we know he has a property worth at least £600,000 in his personal name, so should he not pay, we could seek a winding up order of his company, which couldn't happen until he repaid the banks , and if he didn't have the cash to pay the debt, they would force him to sell his home, so he most likely would then be forced to pay us to avoid losing his home. So we are not sure whether its worth losing yet more money trying to take him to court, but until we take him to court, how do you stop him constantly harrassing us with debt collector after debt collector? I feel he is just trying to be a nuisance and waste our money on solicitor fees endlessly as he knows he has no hope of getting any more money out of us. I called citizens advice bureau, but they said there is nothing they can do as its not a small claims case. Each time he does this, we have to answer to the debt collectors and waste more money-surely there is some way he can be stopped from doing this? He is purposely misleading debt collectors in order to get them to take his case by not disclosing the facts.

She appealed to Smart with the same mitigating circumstance and they told her to pay. A complaint to the principle who hired the [problem] gets the charge cancelled.... http://www.itv.com/news/meridian/2015-09-23/mother-fined-70-because-she-stayed-in-asda-car-park-after-doing-her-shopping-to-breastfeed-baby-daughter/?ref=yfp

https://uk.news.yahoo.com/driver-hit-with-%C2%A370-fine-after--queueing-for-three-hours--to-leave-car-park-123754192.html#LT9BpaU The comments show that the public are still very much ill informed regarding the private parking industry...

hi im new to this site and would like some advice on a parking fine/notice iv just received. iv received a parking charge notice for 70£ from a company called G24? saying if i pay in 14 days it will be 42£ but iv spoken to a few people and they have told me to ignore it as because it is not the council basically it is just a scare mongering letter with pretty red borders and they can not do anything but send a few letters etc.and they will give up. i was parked in a bannatynes car park at 21:33 till 01:17 and apparently the permitted free parking mins were 180 and my stay was 224. i dont know weather to pay the 42£ an just get rid of the hassle or ignore the letter and apparent letters to follow. im going to go back to the car park now to see if i can find the notices or any signs here i parked. but would appreciate some help or feedback from somebody who knows more about this kind of thing. would appreciate any feedback or help. thanks