If a private parking operator has written to you asking for £100, the number can look official. It's on the signs, it's the same at car park after car park, and the letter usually reads as if it were a settled price. This piece is about private parking charges: demands a private company makes under a contract for parking on private land. It isn't about council penalty charge notices, which are a separate system with their own appeal route.
So where did £100 come from? Not from drivers, not from anyone working out what an overstay costs, and not from the Supreme Court. It's an industry ceiling that the government has now chosen to freeze. And the government's own draft code says the cap doesn't make any particular charge fair.
Where the £100 came from
The figure started life in the parking industry's own rulebooks. The government's response to its 2025 consultation says the £100 cap has been "used in various industry codes since at least 2009", and that it hasn't moved despite inflation (MHCLG government response). Drivers didn't set it, and when they were finally asked, most of those who answered said no.
It's still there today. The code operators currently work to, the Private Parking Sector Single Code of Practice, is written and published by the industry's two trade associations, the British Parking Association (BPA) and the International Parking Community (IPC). Its clause 8.2.1 says parking charges must not exceed £100 (Single Code, version 1.1).
A ceiling has a habit of turning into a price. In the 2025 consultation, both trade associations argued that the value of £100 had been eroded over time, and said rising costs had contributed to operators increasingly charging the maximum (MHCLG government response). That's the industry's account of its own pricing, not ours.
Three meanings of "agreed", and why none of them holds
It wasn't agreed with drivers
When the government asked in 2025 whether it should keep £100, 58.8% of the motorists who answered (2,421 people) said no. The government reports a strong preference among them for a single cap somewhere between £50 and £70. Support for £100 came from the other side: 82.3% of the parking operators who answered, 86.1% of landowners, and the two categories of trade-body respondent, who backed it too (MHCLG government response).
It isn't a calculation of loss
The government didn't keep £100 because it worked out that £100 is what a typical breach costs anyone. It says the frozen cap protects drivers from higher charges while keeping a level the industry considers effective. And it says the evidence it has isn't a solid enough basis to work out reliably the lowest charge that would still deter people who break the rules on purpose. So it froze the cap at the industry's figure, and says it will ask the new Scrutiny and Oversight Board to keep the cap under review once that board exists (MHCLG government response).
The consultation itself was candid about the starting point. Because the industry had set its cap at £100, the government assumed a cap at that level wouldn't threaten operators' finances, and assumed it worked as a deterrent. It added that it hadn't reached a final view (MHCLG consultation). In effect, the industry's own choice of number was treated as evidence that the number works.
It isn't a court-set price
Spend any time reading about private parking charges and you'll meet ParkingEye v Beavis, the 2015 Supreme Court case. It's worth knowing what the court decided, and what it didn't.
The charge in that case was £85, not £100, at the car park of the Riverside Retail Park. Mr Beavis overstayed a two-hour limit by almost an hour. ParkingEye had put up numerous notices across the car park saying that breaking the limit would lead to an £85 charge (Supreme Court).
The court's test was whether the charge imposed a detriment out of all proportion to any legitimate interest in enforcing the time limit. It found two legitimate interests: the landowner's, in managing customer parking for the shops, and ParkingEye's, in income to run the scheme plus a profit margin. It held that £85 was neither extravagant nor unconscionable, looking at practice around the UK, the way that particular car park was used and the clear wording of its notices. The decision was six to one; Lord Toulson dissented (Supreme Court).
That's a ruling about one charge, at one site, with clear signs, for an overstay of nearly an hour. It shows a parking charge can be enforceable. It doesn't show that every £100 demand, at every site, under every sign, with whatever is added to it later, is enforceable too.
£100 nearly went away
It didn't have to be £100. The first government code under the Parking (Code of Practice) Act 2019, issued in February 2022, set different caps depending on the breach, the type of land and the area: £50 to £100 outside London, and £100 to £130 in London. It raised the early-payment discount from 40% to 50% and banned debt recovery fees. It was withdrawn in June 2022 after a legal challenge, in which the challengers argued that the lower caps and the fee ban hadn't been properly consulted on (MHCLG consultation).
Four years on, the figure is back where the industry left it.
The headline says £100. The letters can say more
The new draft code caps the parking charge at £100 (clause 8.2.1). Then clause 9.1 allows up to £70 to be added once a charge becomes overdue, for debt recovery. That's £170 before anything else is counted (draft Private Parking Code of Practice).
The draft code doesn't define overdue anywhere in its definitions. It doesn't say the operator has to show that £70 was spent chasing your particular charge.
There's a second route above £100. Clause 8.2.3 lets an operator pursue both an unpaid tariff and the parking charge where the unpaid tariff is more than £60 and the operator has been approved for "tariff pursuit" by its accredited parking association. The 40% early-payment discount applies to the parking charge, not the tariff. The operator has to be clear how the combined sum was worked out, but the code doesn't set out what the approval involves.
None of this is hypothetical. The government's 2025 consultation described widespread reports in April 2025 of parking firms sending thousands of demands of up to £170 to drivers who had paid, but couldn't enter their full registration because of "sticky keys" on faulty ticket machines (MHCLG consultation).
The government calls the £70 cap an interim measure. It says it will consult again on debt recovery fees, including on banning them altogether or setting a lower cap (MHCLG government response). The same consultation reported that, according to a 2023 call for evidence, only 13 to 14% of motorists issued with a debt recovery fee engage with that process and pay it (MHCLG consultation).
What the draft code says about its own cap
Here's the line operators are less likely to quote. Clause 8.2.1 says the maximum the code allows "does not mean that a charge will be fair, recoverable or payable" in every case. Clause 9.2 says the same about the £70, and adds that drivers must have had a fair opportunity to see, read and understand any term about extra fees before deciding to park (draft Private Parking Code of Practice).
The code's introduction goes further. It says complying with the code doesn't, of itself, show that an operator has complied with consumer protection law, or decide whether a particular term, notice or charge is fair in an individual case.
Consumer law has its own test. Under the Consumer Rights Act 2015, an unfair term in a consumer contract isn't binding on the consumer, and a term is unfair if, contrary to the requirement of good faith, it causes a significant imbalance in the parties' rights and obligations to the consumer's detriment (Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 62).
So "it's within the cap" isn't an answer to "is this charge fair?". The draft code says as much itself.
What the code can and can't do
There are two limits worth knowing.
The first is timing. The draft was laid in Parliament on 20 October 2026. It faces 40 days of Parliamentary scrutiny before it can be issued, and comes into force 21 calendar days after it's issued. The government says transitional enforcement arrangements will be published when it comes into force (GOV.UK). Until then, the industry's Single Code is the one operators work to, and a charge issued today isn't automatically a breach of rules that aren't in force yet. We covered where the code stands in our cost of living piece.
The second is legal weight. The Parking (Code of Practice) Act 2019 says a failure to follow the code doesn't of itself make anyone liable to legal proceedings. The code is admissible in evidence, and the Secretary of State must take failures into account when deciding whether to release DVLA keeper data and whether a trade body should be, or stay, an accredited parking association (Parking (Code of Practice) Act 2019, section 5).
So a code point matters most when it connects to something more basic: whether the terms were properly put in front of the driver, whether the operator can prove what it says happened, whether it can hold the keeper liable, and whether the term is fair.
A better question than "is it under £100?"
The useful questions are about the charge in front of you, not the cap above it:
- Was the term on a sign the driver had a fair chance to see and read before parking?
- Can the operator prove the breach it alleges?
- If more than £100 is being demanded, how was each sum worked out, and when and why did the charge become overdue?
- Where the letter is addressed to the registered keeper, has the operator met the conditions for holding the keeper liable? Our guide to the driver vs keeper trap explains how that works.
One thing the cap debate doesn't change: a deadline on a letter or a court claim form is still a deadline. If an operator issues a County Court claim and nobody responds, the court can enter a judgment by default. That's one of the seven mistakes that lose parking appeals.
Where Revenger comes in
£100 was never a price drivers agreed to. It's a ceiling, and the draft code itself says a ceiling doesn't settle whether a charge is fair, recoverable or payable. That question gets answered charge by charge, from the signs, the evidence and the operator's own obligations. Every challenge also asks the operator to do some work, which is the point we made in what a parking appeal costs the operator.
Revenger builds appeals from the operator's own obligations and the evidence you upload. Your first appeal is free on any charge, then £5 to go the whole way: an independent appeal, information requests, complaints or a court defence, as a one-off credit, not a subscription.
Revenger isn't legal advice, and no outcome is guaranteed.
Sources
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Private Parking Code of Practice: government response, updated 20 October 2026.
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Private parking code of practice: consultation, 11 July 2025, updated 20 October 2026.
- Ministry of Housing, Communities and Local Government, Private Parking Code of Practice (draft laid before Parliament), 20 October 2026, clauses 8.2.1, 8.2.3, 9.1 and 9.2.
- GOV.UK, Private Parking Code of Practice publication page, 20 October 2026.
- British Parking Association and International Parking Community, Private Parking Sector Single Code of Practice, version 1.1, clause 8.2.1.
- The Supreme Court, [ParkingEye Limited v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67, case page and press summary](https://www.supremecourt.uk/cases/uksc-2015-0116.html), 4 November 2015.
- Consumer Rights Act 2015, section 62.
- Parking (Code of Practice) Act 2019, section 5.
