I received a £170 penalty charge notice (PCN) after being scammed by fake parking stewards while attending a football match at Old Trafford. This must be affecting unsuspecting fans at every match.
I had been directed to park on a nearby street by men wearing hi-vis jackets with “official match day parking” written on them. They demanded a £10 parking fee in cash. I later discovered they were rogue operators and that they had tricked me into parking on private land.
The operator that enforces parking rules on the road, Ocean Parking, has admitted to me that it has known for years that this scam is happening on its client’s property. It seems disgraceful that Ocean is profiting amid this criminal activity.
GT, Bolton
This scam has been going on for at least five years, judging by social media threads, meaning that the con artists (and legitimate parking enforcers) have been making thousands of pounds from unwitting drivers. Your ire is understandable.
Since the council, the police, Ocean and Manchester United are aware of the fraud, why are criminals still getting away with it? I put this to Greater Manchester police, which told me to ask the council.
Old Trafford council, which does warn of the scam on its website but you’d have to be looking to find it, confirmed it was aware of the problem. “The council undertakes patrols to identify and prevent the use of illegal popup car parks and takes part in joint operations with Greater Manchester police,” said a spokesperson. So far, so ineffectual.
I asked Manchester United what it was doing to warn fans. It said the streets in question had nothing to do with the stadium and fans should book official match-day parking.
What about Ocean, which charges the misdirected drivers three-figure sums for parking on the privately owned land? It refused to disclose how much it makes from event-day parking contraventions. It told me it shared “the frustration” of those who had been affected and had been aware of illegal activity on event days for the “some considerable time” it had managed the area.
It says it alerts police when its patrols spot the fraudsters and in a recent policy change only issues PCNs for very specific contraventions on match days. “The road has marked double-yellow lines as well as contractual warning signage, which states: ‘No Parking or Waiting at Any Time’,” said a spokesperson. “However, we recognise that drivers who are deceived may mistakenly believe they are parking legally.”
Your appeal against the PCN was thrown out by the Independent Appeals Service, by which time the charge had risen from £100 to £170. The adjudicator stated they sympathised with your situation but that extenuating circumstances could not be taken into account. Sadly, therefore, you have no option but to pay up or risk court action.
The lesson for all of us is study the signs in streets and car parks before parking and be suspicious of any instruction to ignore them.
