Proposed changes to Scottish law Options

[Sweven]

Murdo Fraser MSP, a Conservative politician in the Scottish parliament is to propose new legislation on private parking charges and 'penalties'.

He outlines his thinking on

https://www.thinkscotland.org/thinkpolitics...read_full=13397

Whilst using language presenting this as in defence of the driver, I can't help but feel suspicious that he may be pandering to the companies.

The main thrust seems to be to bring Scots law in line with the changes made to English law over the past few years including keeper liability.

What parts of English law would you suggest we adopt, and which should we run a mile from?

[The Rookie]

My take
1/ Landowners do deserve protection from abusive parking, it happens, it may not be the major issue that the number of PPC tickets suggest it is, but that's not the key issue, PoFA does improve the potential protection. There have been a few high profile Scottish cases that demonstrate the level of abuse some drivers are willing to resort to, and Barry Beavis was hardly an innocent victim in that respect, it wasn't question that he knew the landowners wishes and chose to ignore them, having to prove who the driver was of car regularly abusing a car aprk shouldn't be necessary, if there wasn't that type of abuse then I may argue against it.
2/ POPLA has generally been a good thing, but the IAS is a farce, what is needed is a proper independent fact based arbitration system which is truly independent and run separately from the BPA and IPC, I would not like that system to replace the courts as a final arbiter otherwise they will have to be as complex as a court which negates the benefit to both the PPC and the appellant of a quick, simple paper based approach. POPLA has most certainly lost some of its shine as the BPA seeks to compete with the IPC and that is as much the fault of the DVLA as anyone (see point 3)
3/ The DVLA needs to be far more responsible about ATA status, the IPC should not be an ATA (it never matched up to what the BPA offered motorists from the start and has only gone one way since) and the DVLA is seriously remiss in not policing ATA status more rigorously, as it happens the same applies to approved ADR status of the IAS but that Ican't blame the DVLA for.

So in summary, yes to keeper liability but only in conjunction with
1/ Properly policed ATA status
2/ A single (so the same for all events) fair and independent appeals service
3/ A single set of rules (that the ATA's must include in their CoP) that all parties can be aware of and that will be used by the appeals service to arbitrate on indisputable facts only (court for contested facts, which would be limited by that single set of rules).