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I received the Parking Charge Notice from Britannia Parking on my return from overseas on 21 January 2024. My first reaction was that this was a silly mistake. I had no idea that I had parked in an area for which the company had some responsibility despite being a regular if infrequent user of the South Gatwick Premier Inn and it’s car park. I had understood that I was on private land owned Premier Inn. Perhaps surprisingly, I had never even heard of Britannia Parking. My numerous previous overnight visits to the hotel and car park have all been trouble free and my car’s registration has always been logged successfully.
The car park concerned is very large and I suffer with a progressive muscle-wasting disease (Inclusion Body Myositis - IBM) that limits the distance I can safely walk - particularly with luggage. I therefore try to park close to the hotel entrance and walk in a direct line to it. I have never seen any signage relating to Britannia Parking and do not know whether the park is correctly signed or not but, in the case of my usage method, no signs have come to my attention. This could be partly due to the fact that, when walking, I have to always watch the ground a metre or so in front of me to avoid tripping. Standing on a one-inch diameter pebble has in the past caused me to fall. My arrival is also often after dark, although not in every case. Even if signage had come to my attention, it might well have been difficult for me to read. I also suffer with peripheral neuropathy that can make sufferers dizzy when standing, and looking sharply upwards tends to aggravate the situation.
I have never applied for a blue badge although my progressive disease diagnosis and walking difficulties would almost certainly meet the criteria. I have resisted applying because I have a social conscience and have witnessed the widespread abuse of the system.
My IBM, together with peripheral neuropathy and, in cold weather, Reynaud’s Syndrome, from both of which I also suffer, restrict the movement of my fingers and the level of feeling and sensitivity in them. This makes it almost impossible for me to use on-screen or traditional keyboards. I am consequently reliant on other people to carry out such tasks on my behalf. This was the situation at the South Gatwick Premier Inn on 5/6 January when another hotel guest kindly entered the car registration for me. However, I am familiar with the procedure from numerous previous visits.
Despite not having operated the logging keyboard myself, I am as sure as any reasonable person can be that the data was entered correctly. This is because the individual characters of the registration were read aloud as they were keyed in. If the registration is, as alleged, not correctly logged in the system then I believe that the most likely explanation is an error in the electronic data capture process.
I worked as an electronics engineer for 33 years and for a great deal of time was involved in the design and testing of data acquisition systems. This experience allows me to say, without a shadow of doubt, that although such systems are generally very reliable, data errors do occur in systems of this type. The manufacturers and operators of data acquisition systems will, of course, never admit as much for the obvious reason that such an admission might undermine the credibility of their system. This is understandable. Nevertheless, one is reminded of situations such as the long-running sub-postmaster scandal.
Who has never experienced the effects of an error in a digital electronic system - a “glitch” in common parlance? A mobile phone or tablet experiences a problem and is turned off and then restarted - the glitch disappears. If I may be allowed a brief diversion to illustrate my point, I recall attending Cape Kennedy for the launch of the Space Shuttle, a spacecraft equipped with 5 identical computer data acquisition systems that checked the health of onboard systems. Their data was compared and polled to detect errors. The particular launch I attended was called off at the last moment because a “glitch” had been detected in one of these five systems. However, after a week of further testing, NASA announced that no system error had been found.
In the case of the more modest registration logging equipment at the South Gatwick Premier Inn, I have personally previously experienced a broadly comparable glitch where the system stopped responding halfway though entering my car’s registration. Tapping the later characters of the registration merely produced a sequence of one single character ie AYCCCC. The system had to be “reset” to cure the problem.
The registration logging system almost certainly uses printable ASCII/binary representations of the registration characters. These are encoded as 8-bit binary sequences in the ranges 01000001 - 01011010 for upper-case A-Z and 00110000 - 00111001 for 0-9. Characters that are close in the alphabet or number range therefore have very similar codes. Should they become corrupted by a glitch that changes or inserts a single extraneous “1” or “0”, incorrect data may be logged. To take the first two characters as examples, AYxxxxx might be recorded as CYxxxxx by the corruption of the penultimate “0” to “1” of the code representing the letter ”A”, or as AVxxxxx by the insertion of a single extraneous “0” in the code for the letter “Y”. I have therefore requested that the list of registrations logged at around 1500 on 5 January be reviewed for the logging of erroneous registrations similar to AYxxxxx. In the interests of the fairness referenced in Britannia Parking’s appeal policy, I should appreciate sight of this information where the logged registration does not exist and is hence not covered by data protection law.. Those responsible may well say that data corruption is not possible but I disagree. It is unusual, but nevertheless possible.
I firmly believe that my car’s registration was entered into the system conscientiously but, if it should be asserted that the problem arises from a typo, I will challenge that assertion. I am sufficiently confident of my position that I am prepared to defend myself in court, and intend to do so if this appeal is refused. A person with a significant disability charged £100 for another person’s alleged typo would certainly make for a good headline!
I am happy for my doctor to be consulted regarding my IBM and other diagnoses.
Finally, I now understand that Britannia Parking allows only a 10-minute window between a vehicle’s arrival and the logging of the registration at the hotel’s. In my case, particularly when arriving with luggage to unload, this might well be insufficient and hence render the use of the South Gatwick Premier Inn impossible.
Comments would be appreciated.
The car park concerned is very large and I suffer with a progressive muscle-wasting disease (Inclusion Body Myositis - IBM) that limits the distance I can safely walk - particularly with luggage. I therefore try to park close to the hotel entrance and walk in a direct line to it. I have never seen any signage relating to Britannia Parking and do not know whether the park is correctly signed or not but, in the case of my usage method, no signs have come to my attention. This could be partly due to the fact that, when walking, I have to always watch the ground a metre or so in front of me to avoid tripping. Standing on a one-inch diameter pebble has in the past caused me to fall. My arrival is also often after dark, although not in every case. Even if signage had come to my attention, it might well have been difficult for me to read. I also suffer with peripheral neuropathy that can make sufferers dizzy when standing, and looking sharply upwards tends to aggravate the situation.
I have never applied for a blue badge although my progressive disease diagnosis and walking difficulties would almost certainly meet the criteria. I have resisted applying because I have a social conscience and have witnessed the widespread abuse of the system.
My IBM, together with peripheral neuropathy and, in cold weather, Reynaud’s Syndrome, from both of which I also suffer, restrict the movement of my fingers and the level of feeling and sensitivity in them. This makes it almost impossible for me to use on-screen or traditional keyboards. I am consequently reliant on other people to carry out such tasks on my behalf. This was the situation at the South Gatwick Premier Inn on 5/6 January when another hotel guest kindly entered the car registration for me. However, I am familiar with the procedure from numerous previous visits.
Despite not having operated the logging keyboard myself, I am as sure as any reasonable person can be that the data was entered correctly. This is because the individual characters of the registration were read aloud as they were keyed in. If the registration is, as alleged, not correctly logged in the system then I believe that the most likely explanation is an error in the electronic data capture process.
I worked as an electronics engineer for 33 years and for a great deal of time was involved in the design and testing of data acquisition systems. This experience allows me to say, without a shadow of doubt, that although such systems are generally very reliable, data errors do occur in systems of this type. The manufacturers and operators of data acquisition systems will, of course, never admit as much for the obvious reason that such an admission might undermine the credibility of their system. This is understandable. Nevertheless, one is reminded of situations such as the long-running sub-postmaster scandal.
Who has never experienced the effects of an error in a digital electronic system - a “glitch” in common parlance? A mobile phone or tablet experiences a problem and is turned off and then restarted - the glitch disappears. If I may be allowed a brief diversion to illustrate my point, I recall attending Cape Kennedy for the launch of the Space Shuttle, a spacecraft equipped with 5 identical computer data acquisition systems that checked the health of onboard systems. Their data was compared and polled to detect errors. The particular launch I attended was called off at the last moment because a “glitch” had been detected in one of these five systems. However, after a week of further testing, NASA announced that no system error had been found.
In the case of the more modest registration logging equipment at the South Gatwick Premier Inn, I have personally previously experienced a broadly comparable glitch where the system stopped responding halfway though entering my car’s registration. Tapping the later characters of the registration merely produced a sequence of one single character ie AYCCCC. The system had to be “reset” to cure the problem.
The registration logging system almost certainly uses printable ASCII/binary representations of the registration characters. These are encoded as 8-bit binary sequences in the ranges 01000001 - 01011010 for upper-case A-Z and 00110000 - 00111001 for 0-9. Characters that are close in the alphabet or number range therefore have very similar codes. Should they become corrupted by a glitch that changes or inserts a single extraneous “1” or “0”, incorrect data may be logged. To take the first two characters as examples, AYxxxxx might be recorded as CYxxxxx by the corruption of the penultimate “0” to “1” of the code representing the letter ”A”, or as AVxxxxx by the insertion of a single extraneous “0” in the code for the letter “Y”. I have therefore requested that the list of registrations logged at around 1500 on 5 January be reviewed for the logging of erroneous registrations similar to AYxxxxx. In the interests of the fairness referenced in Britannia Parking’s appeal policy, I should appreciate sight of this information where the logged registration does not exist and is hence not covered by data protection law.. Those responsible may well say that data corruption is not possible but I disagree. It is unusual, but nevertheless possible.
I firmly believe that my car’s registration was entered into the system conscientiously but, if it should be asserted that the problem arises from a typo, I will challenge that assertion. I am sufficiently confident of my position that I am prepared to defend myself in court, and intend to do so if this appeal is refused. A person with a significant disability charged £100 for another person’s alleged typo would certainly make for a good headline!
I am happy for my doctor to be consulted regarding my IBM and other diagnoses.
Finally, I now understand that Britannia Parking allows only a 10-minute window between a vehicle’s arrival and the logging of the registration at the hotel’s. In my case, particularly when arriving with luggage to unload, this might well be insufficient and hence render the use of the South Gatwick Premier Inn impossible.
Comments would be appreciated.
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