Jane Winder received a £100 parking charge notice from Euro Car Parks in November 2023 for allegedly not purchasing a £2.30 ticket at a Lancashire car park. She appealed by sending a bank statement and photo of her ticket, but Euro Car Parks rejected the appeal and asked for a £20 administration fee. Between March 2024 and June 2025, she received letters from five different debt collection agencies demanding £170, and in June 2025, Preston Combined Court Centre contacted her stating Euro Car Parks had filed a court claim, with the debt rising to £278.
Euro Car Parks manages more than 3,000 car parks across the UK and Ireland for organizations including supermarkets, hospitals, airports, and universities. The company was fined £473,000 by the UK's Competition and Markets Authority for failing to hand over information to the regulator. It uses automatic number plate recognition technology to identify if people have paid and sends out parking charge notices. According to Popla, PCNs issued by Euro Car Parks were the second most-appealed fine in 2023 and 2024, with 12,000 appeal submissions in 2023 and 15,000 in 2024.
Private parking firms issued 13.1 million tickets between April and December last year, a 19% increase from 11.0 million in the equivalent period the previous year, according to multiple reports. They issue an average of 47,749 parking fines daily, with individual tickets reaching £100, meaning the collective daily cost to motorists could approach nearly £4.8 million, according to reports.
A Bill to introduce a code of practice for the private parking industry received royal assent in March 2019 but was withdrawn by the Conservative government in June 2022 following a legal challenge from parking firms. A fresh consultation on the code by the current Labour Government concluded in September 2025.
It is a contravention to obstruct a dropped kerb where it is used to allow vehicles or pedestrians to cross between the road and a driveway, and councils can issue a Penalty Charge Notice typically around £70 to £130, multiple reports indicate. Enforcement bodies such as the North Essex Parking Partnership say parking adjacent to a dropped kerb can cause considerable inconvenience and is actively enforced, with vehicles blocking more than 50% of a driveway access subject to a PCN. There is no UK-wide law limiting the number of vehicles on a private driveway itself, but problems arise if parking causes obstruction, nuisance, or a change of use.
According to a Which? expert, you can appeal a parking fine if signs aren't clear, if you're charged more than £100, or if you have a mitigating reason like ill health or vehicle breakdown. If a parking company is not part of an accredited trade association like the British Parking Association or Independent Parking Committee, you can ignore the fine as it cannot get your details from the DVLA. For members of the BPA, you have 28 days after rejection to appeal to POPLA; for the IPC, you have 21 days after rejection to appeal to the Independent Appeals Service.
Waitrose introduced Britannia Parking at its Romsey store in December, replacing a system with up to two hours of free parking where tickets were stamped at the till, now using ANPR systems and external wardens, according to multiple reports. Shoppers have been issued fines of up to £100 after overstaying their two-hour slot. A member of staff told Sandra Rowden that Waitrose could no longer afford to run the barrier and it was cheaper to employ Britannia.
Motorists can face charges of up to £100 for leaving their vehicle in a supermarket car park outside the store's opening hours, even if the car park is empty. Supermarket car parks are private land with rules enforced by private enforcement companies via Parking Charge Notices ranging from around £40 to £100. Many supermarket car parks use Automatic Number Plate Recognition cameras to enforce rules. Motorhome and campervan owners could be hit with £70 fines and face having their vehicles towed for failing to meet new overnight parking restrictions being introduced across popular UK holiday hotspots. Searches for motorhome parks have soared by 9,000% in the past month.