ADMINISTRATORS for Britain’s biggest car park firm are trying to claw back almost 100,000 unpaid parking fines since the company collapsed earlier this year, it has emerged.
NCP, which operates over 300 car parks around the country, filed for administration on March 16, putting around 700 jobs at risk.
Some 29 of its car park sites have since closed down, including locations in London, Leicester and Southampton.
At the time of its administration, NCP had a backlog of nearly 100,000 unpaid parking charge notices, The Times reports.
While 80,000 of these had been parked by debt collectors, with a further 15,000 waiting to go through the courts, administrators at PwC are now working through them to try and recover the unpaid fines.
They have already collected £402,000 in unpaid parking charges during the first month of the administration.
Drivers who used NCP car parks may have received a parking charge notice for failing to pay for their parking or staying longer than the time you paid for.
NCP, which has been trading since the 1930s, blamed its bankruptcy on “shifts in commuting and customer driving patterns”.
It comes as a growing number of shoppers ditch the UK’s high streets for retail parks and online shopping.
While a number of its car parks have been forced to close, it has confirmed its remaining car parks across the UK will continue to operate as normal, and it the business hopes to be rescued be a new owner.
You can see the full list of 29 NCP sites which have shut down already here:
NCP carparks closed to date
- NCP car parks closed on Thursday, April 30
- Bradford Southgate
- Chester Browns Yard
- Kidderminster Swan Centre
- Nottingham Huntingdon Street
- Southampton Portland Terrace
- NCP car parks closed on Thursday, April 16
- Belfast Dublin Road
- Coventry Belgrade Plaza
- Leicester St Nicholas Circle
- Sheffield Blonk Street
- NCP car parks closed on Friday, March 27
- Ashford County Square
- Ashton-un-Lyne Cotton Street
- Banbury Marlborough Road
- Bexley Royal Oak Road
- Birmingham Gough Street
- Bournemouth Hinton Road (already closed)
- Bristol Nelson Street
- Bromley Travelodge
- Eastbourne Trinity Place
- Exeter Market Street
- Grantham Station 1-3
- Hinckley Britannia Shopping Centre
- Ipswich Portman Road
- Leicester Abbey Street
- Leicester East Street
- Leicester Lee Circle
- Leicester Rutland Centre
- London King’s Cross St Pancras
- London Knightsbridge
- Luton Regent Street
I’ve been fined – do I still have to pay up?
If you have been issued an parking charge notice (PCN), it will still be valid despite NCP’s collapse into administration.
According to administrators PwC, any private parking penalties – either before or after the collapse – are still valid.
These means you will still be liable to pay any fines you owe and can be chased for these.
If you are owed a refund by NCP – for example, due to being overcharged for parking or pre-booking parking at a site that has shut down – you might not be able to get your money back.
According to MoneySavingExpert.com, when a firm goes into administration, customers are treated as unsecured creditors, meaning refunds aren’t guaranteed as the company will pay banks and other secured creditors first.
PwC has said that “as a result of the administration, we are unfortunately unable to provide you with any refund”.
However, if you paid for something on a credit card, and it was more than £100, you may be able to claim it back via your bank under Section 75 of the Consumer Credit Act.
If it cost less than £100 and you used a credit card, you may be able to get your bank to use chargeback – whereby your bank tries to claw back money you paid for something you didn’t get.
PwC declined to comment.
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