Staff Parking - Gemini Parking Solutions at Broomfield Hospital, Chelmsford

[Yeni]

Hi,

I hope that I am posting this in the correct place.

  I wonder if I could get some advice please?

I had a look through at similar issues but I couldn't find anything up to date.

 

I work at a hospital in Essex. 

As a staff member I have a parking permit and buy 'scratchcards' which you use to scratch out the the date you are parking and display alongside your permit in your windscreen.

 

By 8.15 most mornings the staff car parks are full. 

Lots of staff have no option but to park elsewhere, these include, parking on double yellow lines or red routes at the side of the roads leading into the hospital, parking at the end of staff car park rows, or in the car parks designated for patient parking.

 

There is an unwritten rule that staff do this and many do, including myself (displaying staff permit and scratchcard for the day) on the occasions that I cant make it into work one hour earlier than I start, I have had to do this on several occasions. 

 

Sometimes the parking company that are contracted by the NHS trust issue PCNs to cars parked in this way.  Again an unwritten rule is that when issued with one of these penalties, the staff member emails in an appeal and they are generally accepted and the notice is dismissed.

 

Over the last 18 months I have had seven of these notices and the first five were dismissed. 

 

However and this is now my problem,

the last two have not been accepted and I have been told that I have to pay the fines. 

 

I emailed as usual after receiving both.  (They issue a ticket to the the windscreen of the car) I was told that they were not accepting my appeal. 

I subsequently received letters stating I had to pay or they would take further action. 

 I then emailed these letters to the car park manager of the hospital trust asking him to have a look at them.  (In fact the letters are addressed to my husband as the registered keeper of the vehicle)

 

I took my complaint to him last Wednesday and he has responded today, saying that they cannot waive the fines and that the car parks were not full on those occasions (they were though, this is actually difficult to prove as there is not a system in place to prove or dismiss this)

 

in the email from the car park manager he says that as parking has got worse etc they are having to be stricter etc etc. and that as I have previously had notices, and that there is generally a first time offender lenience, that they cannot do anything now and that I have to pay.

 

In the meantime I have received solicitors letters saying I have to pay £150 for each notice or they are going to recommend that their client takes me to court.

 

I'm in a position where I really want to fight this. 

Parking in general at this hospital, is awful (I have purposely not named the hospital trust or the parking company as Im not sure that I should at this stage?) 

 

Staff that start work after 8.15am (sometimes a little earlier but generally that's when the car parks are full) are faced with options as mentioned above.  We all have to pay for parking, each time I have had a valid staff parking permit in place, but they will not accept this defence

.

Would anyone be willing to advise me on this please?

 

Thank you in advance.

 

 

[dx100uk]

Moved to the private parking forum

 

They are not fines

 

Please complete this:

 

[Yeni]

Thank you I will go through all of this, very much appreciate your response : ) 

[honeybee13]

Hello and welcome to CAG.

 

I imagine you're going to tell us which parking firm and which hospital when you fill in the questionnaire. We have a few hospital threads and can link you to one if someone else has posted about the same hospital.

 

HB

[Yeni]

Hi, Thank you SilverFox and Honeybee, thank you for the welcome,

I've put all the details in below and will attach the PDF of the email response and the NTK

I meant to say - the 2nd PCN is exactly as below but was issued on  24/10/2019

 

1 The date of infringement? 06/11/2019

 

2 Have you yet appealed to the parking company yet? [Y/N?] Yes

if you have then please post up whatever you sent and how you sent it and the date you sent it,

 

Sent by Email on 11^th November 2019

Dear Sir/Madam, I parked at Broomfield Hospital, after driving around the staff car parks I could not find a space and eventually parked in patient parking.  I displayed my scratch card alongside my permit which is reference number (ref no taken out).  Kindest regards

 

has there been a response?

Response Email received on 14^th November2 019 with an attached letter (copied to PDF)

Please find important correspondence attached regarding your Parking Charge Notice.

DO NOT REPLY TO THIS EMAIL.

If you are not satisfied with the outcome of your appeal, you cannot appeal again. You can make a complaint, details on how to do this are detailed at WEBSITE.

 

If you haven't appealed yet - ,.........DONT ! seek advice on your topic

 

have you received a Notice To Keeper? (NTK) [must be received by you between 29-56 days] Yes

what date is on it 18^th December 2019 (Received in the post after Christmas)

 

Did the NTK provide photographic evidence? No, there is photographic evidence on the first response from them (in the PDF)

 

3 Did the NTK mention Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA) [Y/N?] Yes

 

4 If you appealed after receiving the NTK,

did the parking company give you any information regarding the further appeals process?

[it is well known that parking companies will reject any appeal whatever the circumstances]

 

I Have not appealed to them.  I spoke to someone within the hospital trust (car park management) who said he would have a look at the letters, so I sent them by email to him on Wednesday 22^nd January.  He responded in an email response received today Tuesday 28^th January that he couldn’t waive the charges now – I can send you the email

 

5 Who is the parking company?

Gemini Parking Solutions London Ltd

PO Box 2525

Buckhurst Hill

IG8 1HR

 

6. where exactly [Carpark name and town] did you park?

Car park at Broomfield Hospital, Broomfield Chelmsford Essex

.............................

 

 

.............................

PDF for OCT PCN.pdf

[honeybee13]

Thank you for the information. I've amended your thread title to show more detail.

 

If you post up emails or correspondence, please make sure to block out any identifying information.

 

HB

[honeybee13]

If you go to the top of this screen, you'll see a white Search box on the right hand side. Type in Broomfield Chelmsford or similar and you'll find a couple of other threads about Gemini and the same hospital.

 

HB

[Yeni]

Thanks Honeybee. 

Im having trouble uploading PDF going to try again now First Response Email 06.11.2019.pdf

[Yeni]

This is the NTK

Copy of NTK 06.11.2019.pdf

[honeybee13]

Here's a thread from someone who won. There are others.

 

HB

 

[ericsbrother]

this is about performance to or of a contract.

You paid to park, they couldnt offer you a space you had paid to use so you used an alternative space. No loss was incurred by that to either the parking co or the hospital.

 

are you in a union? If so contact your regional officer and ask to make use of their legal cover to fight this. your employer will not wnat to spend money being humiliated in public ( though that is not certain with hospital trusts, they do make a pigs ear out of everything) and I suspect that the estates manager will be told to tell Gemini to cancel.

 

the other thing is that as you appealed before the issue of the NTK the parking co knew who the driver was so they shouldnt have obtained the keeper details as there can never be a liability by them for the debt.

This is a breach of the GDPR and DVLA KADOE rules so your other half can go after thm for that. It might be worth letting the estates manager know on the qt that he may be having to appear in court to defend his employers stance on this in a fight that really has nothing to do with the hospital at all

[Yeni]

Ericsbrother, Thank you. 

I have been reading up on PCNs and private parking companies, all make for very interesting reading! 

Thank you so much for taking the time to reply to my post.  

 

I do not belong to a union.  

We have now (addressed to my partner) received 2 x letters from a debt collection agency, demanding he contacts them to pay £150 for each PCN.  As I understand it, he may just ignore these? And neither of us should have any contact with them. Is that correct? 

 

Having a look through various sites it seems that the trust promised improvements 18 months ago (this is when I started work at this hospital) and although there are on-going changes, such as building work etc (that is, of course taking a very long time) it appears that they operate a system of ticketing some cars and not others, that are parked in areas other than staff parking areas. 

 

It looks like staff are getting tickets on a really regular basis (someone has told me that she gets up to three a week sometimes and an email to appeal is all that is needed to have it waived)  However others have had a PCN and simply paid up. 

 

 As I start work sometimes at 9.30am (when I drop my children to school first) (rather than before 8.30am when the car parks fill up) I often cant park and have not always received a ticket when parking in other areas (Always displaying valid staff permit) 

 

In the last 18 months I have had 7 PCNs and the first five were waived when I appealed. 

The parking office have pointed this out to me and I think are using this as justification for not waiving these last two notices. 

They also made a point that they are now being stricter (?) 

 

I suppose the point that I am trying to make is that the whole system is an absolute shambles and extremely stressful for staff, who are just trying to get to work!  

 

I am going to send a reply to the estates office, I wonder if I might post it on here first to get advice as to the wording of it? 

Thanks so much, Yeni.

 

Also someone has just told me that when she parks in non staff car park (as she does other site visits shes 'in and out' at various time throughout the day sometimes, she just takes the PCN to the travel office and they waive it straight away.....

 

 

[dx100uk]

you most certainly ignore any DCA on any debt no matter what type it is

they are NOT BAILIFFS

and have

ZERO legal powers .

 

just for point of clarity upon ignore...

you do not ignore a letter entitled 'letter of claim' from a parking company or a solicitor acting for the parking co.

 

seems like Broomfield has gone to the dogs in the last 15yrs from when I used to do work there, charging staff to park!! bit like a stealth wage cut, you all should complain and refuse to have to pay anything under whatever stealth wages cut scheme they invent, little the trust can do about it.

 

dx