The CMA just went after private parking. It probably does not protect your van.

16.9 million private parking tickets were issued in 2025-26, up 17% in a year and up 148.5% since 2018-19. A meaningful share of those land on vehicles with a company name on the side, where the charge goes to the registered keeper: the business.

So the CMA’s intervention in July was genuinely significant. It is also, for our readers, widely misreported. Here is what it says, and, more usefully, what it does not.

What the CMA actually did

In an open letter dated 16 July 2026, signed by its Senior Director for Consumer, the CMA told operators it had opened an investigation into one operator over consumer law concerns, issued advisory letters to others “regarding their appeals processes for motorists and their reliance on potentially unfair terms when seeking to recover unpaid PCNs”, and written to both trade associations.

The substance is sharper than the headlines suggested. The CMA has seen appeal files where charges were issued to people who entered a car park and left again after five to eleven minutes, usually because they could not pay. Broken payment machines, no mobile signal, no suitable bay. Its view is that some operators may be acting contrary to the Industry Code, and potentially in breach of consumer law, when they do that.

Why it may not help your business

Every enforcement route in that letter runs through consumer protection law: unfair commercial practices, and unfair terms under Part 2 of the Consumer Rights Act 2015. Both are built for consumers, and the Act defines that word narrowly.

A limited company is not an individual, so it is never a consumer. A sole trader is an individual, but only counts as a consumer when acting “wholly or mainly outside” their business. Parked at a customer’s site, in a signwritten van, on a working day, that test is not close. Where a private parking charge is a business matter, the CRA unfair-terms regime is not your route, and the CMA is not your regulator.

That is not a reason to pay. It is a reason to use the arguments that do apply to you.

Three things that do apply

1. Contract law, which is where these charges live anyway. A private parking charge is not a fine. It is a claim for breach of a contract said to be formed by signage. That contract has to have been formed: adequate signs, visible on entry, a genuine chance to read the terms and to leave. The CMA’s own concern about drivers who could not pay in the first five to eleven minutes is a formation argument, and formation arguments belong to businesses as much as consumers.
2. The £70 has to be justified either way. The CMA’s point that the Industry Code alone creates no liability is not a consumer-only point. It is a point about how contractual liability arises. Ask what term you are said to have agreed to, and when. Across a fleet, £70 a charge is the difference between an annoyance and a line in the accounts.
3. Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, used deliberately. Where a charge lands on the business as keeper, the keeper may name the driver, after which the matter is between the operator and that driver. That is an England and Wales mechanism. The Schedule 4 keeper-liability paragraphs do not operate in Scotland or Northern Ireland, where the operator must prove who was driving. And naming a driver is not the same as recharging them. Taking it out of their wages has its own rules, and getting those wrong is more expensive than the ticket.

What is coming, and why the date matters

There is currently no statutory Private Parking Code of Practice in force. The statutory code was withdrawn; the operative rulebook is the industry’s own Single Code of Practice, issued jointly by the BPA and IPC, which caps charges at £100 with a minimum 40% discount for early payment.

The government has consulted on bringing a statutory code back, including options on debt recovery fees, and the CMA has sent it recommendations. Reporting suggests a statutory code could be enacted by December 2026. That is an expectation rather than a certainty, and we will say so until it is law.

If it lands, what a private operator may lawfully charge and how it must handle appeals changes. Anything you read about private parking written before that date will need re-reading afterwards, including this. We date every page and re-check the figures on a schedule for exactly this reason. See the verified-facts register.

What to do with the charge on your desk

1. Do not pay it on reflex. Around half of challenged parking charges are cancelled. Almost nobody challenges.
2. Photograph the signage from the driver’s eye line, on entry and at the bay. Formation arguments are won on what a driver could actually see.
3. Ask why payment failed, if it did. A broken machine or no signal is now a documented CMA concern, not just a grumble.
4. Query the £70 separately from the charge. They stand or fall on different reasoning.
5. Decide the driver question deliberately. Transfer under Schedule 4 where the law allows, or fight it as keeper. Do not default to docking wages.

This article is general information about UK law, not legal advice for your situation. Almost Legal is AI drafting software grounded in UK law, not a law firm — you review and send everything it produces.