Few areas of law generate as much heat, and cause litigants to act as irrationally as parking.“Can I park here?” is a deceptively simple question, but it does not invite any simple answer, because it all depends upon whether “here” is a public road, a private road, a council car park, a private car park, or whether the owner of the car park is a member of relevant trade association, or an independent actor, and whether the person who wants to park is a member of the public, a tenant, or an owner of adjacent land, or whether he has business with the tenant or owner.
There is no single set of rules to which the would-be parker can conveniently look, but only a patchwork of common law principles, legislative interventions and industry practice including voluntary codes, the applicability of all of which depends not only upon territorial jurisdiction but also subject-matter context. Up until now, there has been no convenient single place in which these complex provisions are pulled together and explained in simple and approachable language.
A Practical Guide to the Law of Parking in Great Britain, for the first time ever gives clear and comprehensible guidance for all who want to know what is the answer, under the law of England, and of Scotland, to that deceptively simple question.
