Readers' letters: Private firms issuing parking fines must be reined in

The campaigner Lynda Eagan described the widespread experience of wrong and expensive parking fines as a “filthy business” (Scotsman, April 22). My recent experience wholly reinforces this.

Having received no prior notification of any infringement until a debt collector’s letter arrived, I was effectively given four-days’ notice to stump up £170 before court proceedings would be enacted: strong-arm tactics, using a legally flawed process, and totally disproportional for a minor parking infringement! According to Lynda I am only one of thousands across the country.

This is now backed by RAC research. Excluding 2020/21 for Covid, estimates just published highlight the exponential growth in parking tickets issued by private firms that has occurred over the last ten years: 12.77 million tickets were issued in 2023/24, up from 3.08 million in 2014/15. If this trend continues, 14.5 million tickets will be issued this year at a rate of 41,000 per day (Scotsman, 25 April). Spectacular growth that Rachel Reeves would die for! Who knew this was one of the UK’s major growth industries!

Private firms issued 12.77 million parking tickets in 2023/24 (Picture: stock.adobe.com)

The key traits of this industry are: 1) It remains unregulated. The “Private Parking Code of Practice” introduced by the previous Government was withdrawn following legal challenge by the industry in 2022. 2) The sector is large and ubiquitous, with private firms owning more than 50,000 sites across the country and 3) The sector is increasingly concentrated, with five firms accounting for more than 50 per cent of tickets issued.

The Government needs to grasp this prickly nettle quickly and re-introduce a legally binding code of “best practice”. And, while the measure of market concentration may just fall shy of automatic referral to the Competition and Markets Authority, a pre-emptive investigation into this industry and how it’s run would I’m sure be welcomed by the eight out of ten drivers who have reported frustration at the current state of affairs.

Ewen Peters, Newton Mearns, East Renfrewshire

Human dignity

As a member of the LGBT community and a Labour voter, I feel compelled to express my deep disappointment with Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s recent comments on transgender rights.

I voted for my Labour MP because I could not support the views of the SNP’s Deputy First Minister, Kate Forbes. Yet, within months of taking office, Labour has begun to mirror the very same exclusionary rhetoric I voted against. Starmer’s retreat into defining womanhood strictly by biological sex is not just a betrayal of LGBT people—it is a betrayal of the values Labour claimed to uphold.

This is part of a wider pattern. The government’s abandonment of key manifesto commitments – from abandoning the WASPI women and scrapping green investment to abandoning pledges to scrap tuition fees and end the two-child benefit cap – suggests a leadership that lacks both principle and conviction. The party I supported promised compassion and progress. What we now see is political expediency at the expense of vulnerable communities.

Trans people deserve respect, recognition, and protection. Their rights should not be a political calculation. I urge Labour MPs – including mine – to publicly reaffirm their commitment to equality, and to challenge the party’s alarming drift into opportunism and moral ambiguity.

If Labour cannot stand firm on basic human dignity, then it risks losing the trust of those who believed it could do better.

Adrian Fletcher, Glasgow

Snake-oil salesman

Surprisingly, A Lewis (Letters, 25 April) omitted Reform UK’s most significant “promise”: “pie in the sky”. It’s astounding that many who were duped by wizard snake-oil salesman Nigel Farage into believing Brexit would solve all of the UK’s problems now believe that Reform UK will perform this same magic act.

Even a simple glance behind the mask of deception would reveal that this sorcerer is not “anti-establishment”, as he presents himself, but is bought and paid for by the economic elite acting on behalf of the British Establishment.

Stan Grodynski, Longniddry, East Lothian

Education crisis

Scottish education, once the envy of the world, now appears to be in crisis. The loss of 350 jobs at Edinburgh University and the ongoing struggle to recruit new teachers simply accentuate a problem, to which there doesn’t appear to be any immediate solution.

We should cherish our teachers, underpaid, undervalued and understaffed, who do a remarkable job in often impossible circumstances. Having to cope with a variety of special needs, including autism, without the provision of promised specialised classroom assistants, their skills are stretched to the limits, and beyond.

Funds, admittedly needed, for defence are readily found, but what about education, arguably the most valuable priority, the whole future of our young people? With both schools and universities struggling financially, perhaps it's time to reflect upon the vital contribution they make. Our children deserve nothing less.

Ian Petrie, Edinburgh

Astonishing sums

I was astonished to read that Edinburgh University employs over 15,000 staff. This of course includes the Principal on a salary of more than £400,000 and several hundred lecturers earning over £100,000. Given the university has approximately 50,000 students it does not take a degree level of intelligence to work out the ratio of staff to students. If only our nurses and doctors could be afforded the same ratio!

Brian Petrie, Edinburgh

See the light

The UK economy is in tatters. Brexit as predicted by the Scottish Government, has been an unmitigated disaster and is costing us billions of pounds each year.

Our Labour government is supplying weapons to a country accused of genocide, keeping children in poverty via the two-child cap, imposing huge cuts on disabled people’s benefits, denying pensioners the Winter Fuel Allowance and reneging on promises made to WASPI women when in opposition. The growth Rachel Reeves promised has not materialised and the only people laughing all the way to the bank are the ultra-wealthy.

Evidently, none of this is of any concern to your correspondent David Millar (Letters, 24 April) who can only throw some cheap jibes at the SNP while the good ship HMS United Kingdom sinks slowly but surely beneath the waves. Scotland can do so much better than this shambles. Perhaps Mr Millar’s new glasses will help him see the light!

Alan Woodcock, Dundee

Straws clutched

A recent rogue opinion poll seems to have set the bravehearts of Scottish nationalist activists aflutter. After virtually years of little or no change, the poll, ran by a pro-SNP newspaper, showed a sudden swing to the nationalist cause.

Then they got another straw to clutch. In Northern Ireland there was talk of a possible constitutional referendum if opinion polls showed a constant and sustained lead there.

And so, the latest call, barely heard above the myriad problems facing Scotland, for another referendum.

Presumably we have to forget that we had a “once in a lifetime” referendum here in 2014, which the nationalists lost by a distance.

They did not have one in Northern Ireland. Here, however, the nationalists were hammered. They had every single possible advantage: the date, the crucial wording; the age and make-up and place of residence of the voters, and more, conditions they could never ever get again. But it made no difference. They lost, badly. If you are using a rogue poll conducted by a pro-separation newspaper as an argument, your cause I am afraid is already long lost.

Alexander McKay, Edinburgh

Climate games

Transport Secretary Fiona Hyslop has admitted that the Scottish Government needs to drop its “unrealistic, unachievable and unnecesary” target to reduce car use by 20 per cent by 2030 (Scotsman, 24 April).

Scotland has 3.1 million cars but there are 1.475 billion cars in the world so Scotland is just playing climate games with its miniscule 0.1 per cent of global emissions.

China says it is aiming for net zero in 2060 whilst India has said 2070 and the US under Donald Trump will be increasing its emissions, not reducing them. Does any sane person believe that the oil, gas and coal-rich countries will curb the exploitation of their resources which have driven their economies and raised the standards of living for their populations?

Clark Cross, Linlithgow, West Lothian

Trump’s rebuke

“Vladimir, STOP!’ Trump tweeted to Putin, issuing rare rebuke after Russia launched a savage attack on Ukraine.

Naughty, naughty Vlad... and after Donald promised you Crimea and a whole chunk of Ukraine and told Ukraine to shut up and lump it. How selfish can you get? acting with impunity like this while the White House fawns over you.

Trevor Rigg, Edinburgh

Mammy’s boy

Donald Trump rebukes Putin for continuing to attack Ukraine with all the sincerity of some feckless Glaswegian mammy droning to her psychotic offspring to cease laying waste to some high street shop “or the man will come over and shout at you”.

Mark Boyle, Johnstone, Renfrewshire

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