Parking in University car park - diploma will be withheld if he does ot pay!!!

[ray55gduk]

My friend, a student at Canterbury Christ Church university,

parked his car several times in one of the university car parks without incident,

until one day he got a ticket - and then another.

 

In line with advice I have seen on this site, I advised him to ignore them.

 

In time letters arrived, increasing the penalty from £70 to £140 for each ticket.

Again, I advised him to do nothing in response to letters from the security company.

 

Eventually, a letter from the university itself arrived, which said that if the amounts remained unpaid then his diploma would be withheld when he graduated.

 

Can they do this to him?

 

They have no proof that he was driving on those days - it could easily have been me.

 

I would be grateful for any advise on the legality of their proposed action.

[dx100uk]

IMHO no!!

 

dx

[Jamberson]

I think when you enrol you normally sign some sort of agreement and there are usually clauses about things like misconduct, bringing the institution into disrepute, pinching books from the library etc.

 

I think he needs to get a copy of that and see what it says. I think it is possible they could withhold it - how serious would he be about taking legal action over it? It would presumably be easier and cheaper to just pay the two charges!

 

If he can find out what his agreement says, that will be a starting point.

[Cyberprog]

In normal circumstances you wouldn't have a contract with the parking company, hence why the advice is normally to file in the bin.

However when it comes to a university, he may have signed for (and formed a contract for) a parking permit. This obviously ties his registration number to his student account, and means that if he breaks the contract (such as parking in odd places) then he would be liable for those charges.

He could however argue the charges being a penalty in the contract, and unenforceable, similar to the bank charges. But he'd be going up against the university and this may put him at a disadvantage.

[Jamberson]

As a general rule, the "ignore" advice should always be applied in situations where it is just the car owner vs the parking company. Whenever there is a third party involved - a landlord, a car hire company, an employer etc - then it's more complex and comes down to the contracts each party has in place.

[Anus Horribilis]

I think when you enrol you normally sign some sort of agreement and there are usually clauses about things like misconduct, bringing the institution into disrepute, pinching books from the library etc.

 

I think he needs to get a copy of that and see what it says. I think it is possible they could withhold it - how serious would he be about taking legal action over it? It would presumably be easier and cheaper to just pay the two charges!

 

I agree - there's a good chance that they've got a clause somewhere to cover this.

[Surfer01]

Either way the university will have to demonstrate the losses they suffered because he parked in that area. May be an idea to pay it, get the diploma and then recover the payment via a small claims action.