Driving News

Ordinary motorists are being legally mugged by the price of petrol. It’s time to put the brakes on fat-cat fuel barons

It is with dismay that I note the current prices displayed at petrol stations up and down the country. What is particularly hard to digest is the total lack of justification for today’s prices. The average motorist is currently paying just over £1.15 per litre unleaded, with some in London reaching £1.20, already echoing the notorious peak of July 2008.

However, the cost of crude oil is nowhere near the spike it hit during that time; in fact, it is only just over half. Where, therefore, is the reasoning behind hitting motorists so hard in the wallet? It is, unfortunately, to be located at the desks of a handful of investors instructing market speculators to drive prices up, and sustained by petrol companies not being prepared to pass falls directly on to the consumer.

So let us outline the impact of these price rises on those who feel it most acutely. First, hardworking families and rural communities, both of which are reliant on their cars. In my constituency in Lancashire, there is a large rural community: parents need to get children to school and farmers must move around the area. Any increase in the cost of a tank of petrol must be funded from their static household budgets.

Second, let us consider the UK’s haulage and transport industries, integral to the national economy – yet both are trembling beneath the weight of these excessive prices.

Exorbitant price increases and the ever-present uncertainty over further increases are a mounting burden to motorists. The result is a transport industry already struggling and now facing still further fuel inflation. All of this at a time when the economy needs nurturing and all the help it can get.

In short, petrol consumers are being legally mugged.

It is high time that urgent and sustainable action is taken. Petrol companies have been getting away with this for far too long. The government needs to address the issue with vigour and show its commitment to helping ordinary members of the public. We should not be steamrollered by a handful of dominant companies which monopolise the supply chain with ease.

I believe there are two courses of action to be taken: the planned 3p increase in petrol duty should be delayed indefinitely; and petrol companies should be more effectively regulated – we have allowed them to become too powerful.

Indeed, we should be considering a windfall on these companies in order to fund a reduction in overall duty. Regulation of petrol companies and the major retailers must demonstrate commitment to the motorist and the UK’s hard-pressed transport industries.

Petrol companies once known for exploration should now be under the spotlight for their exploitation. And we should be willing to demonstrate resoundingly that we will not be held to ransom by fat-cat fuel barons.

High charges, overcrowding and pre-payment all blamed by public in Which? survey

Overcrowded and expensive car parks add to the stress of visits to NHS hospitals for half of those using them, according to a report published today.

Problems finding a space, the cost of parking and a host of confusing payment systems are among the difficulties facing hospital visitors, who may be going for treatment themselves, according to research by the consumer watchdog Which?.

Its survey found 67% of people who had used an NHS hospital car park in the last two years thought charges were too high. More than half visitors (52%) had problems finding a space and a third (33%) had to queue or wait to park.

Even when they found a space, 33% faced further difficulty trying to pay the charges.

The problems only apply to England, as car park charges have been scrapped at NHS hospitals in Scotland and will be phased out in Wales by 2011.

Many hospitals justify the charges by saying they need the income. But using the Freedom on Information Act, Which? has found that some hospitals make profits of £1m a year from their car parks.

Peter Vicary-Smith, chief executive of Which? said: “It’s outrageous that using an NHS hospital car park is such a problematic experience for so many people.

“Visiting hospital is stressful enough and people don’t need the added burden of battling with the parking system. The government must take steps to fix the system and ensure all hospital car parks have sufficient capacity, offer fair prices and have user-friendly ways to pay.”

A Department of Health spokeswoman said the government had launched a consultation into the issue in England: “People in hospital are often at a low point in their lives – emotionally and financially – and high parking charges can add to stress or limit visits from family and friends.

“We want to make sure that we get the best solution to providing fairer hospital car parking to all patients. That is why we have held a consultation on developing a fairer and more consistent approach to hospital car parking across the NHS. We are currently analysing the responses in full and will publish the results in due course.”

Paul Watters, head of public affairs at the AA said: “The AA has applauded the Scottish and Welsh governments’ decision to end the majority of hospital parking charges.

“However, we recognise that charges are often a key part of a strategy to manage parking space effectively and that, if parking became free, ongoing parking management would still be needed.”

He added: “Offering free parking to all inpatients and their visitors is the right approach, although we would like to see this extended to some outpatients, such as those undergoing regular treatment for serious ailments.”

Many participants in the Which? research complained that the problem was inflexibility and having to pre-pay.

A mother from the north-east said: “I have a son – now 11 years old – who has various medical problems, so I have used hospital car parks on many occasions, and it has generally been a nightmare.

“My main complaint applies to all the car parks that I have ever used, and that is they all require you to pay in advance, when you don’t know how long you are going to be. This means you either pay extra to be on the safe side, or risk a parking ticket.”

When her husband bought a new car that was perfect for a family of four, Mishal Husain found to her horror that it wouldn’t take three child seats in the back. Luckily she’s discovered a gadget that’s solved the problem

A s far as cars are concerned, our household lives up to the starkest ¬gender stereo¬types: while my husband, Meekal, has taught our three sons to spot a Porsche at 100 paces, I walk past a Ferrari without so much as a sideways glance. It was against that background that I made the decision late last year to leave the choice of a new family car entirely to him. Once we agreed on the budget, this was (blissfully) one item of household admin with which I did not need to be involved.

And so it was that I opened the front door on New Year’s Eve to find him emerging from a vehicle more thorough¬bred than workhorse – the kind he had probably dreamed of every time he got into its predecessor, our trusted but admittedly unfashionable Fiat Multipla. It was an Audi estate, lovely even to my unappreciative eye. Half listening to assurances that it was “a very good deal” and “buying it before the end of the year got us two free services”, my eyes flickered over its ¬dimensions. “It looks a bit narrow for the car seats. Will we all fit in?”

Unfortunately for Meekal, we didn’t. He’d been banking on the fact that with our three-year-old twins about to graduate from their armchair-sized seats into slimmer boosters like our five-year old’s, all three boys would fit safely (and legally) into the back.

But no amount of shopping around for the narrowest of seats and squeezing them in as tightly as possible did the trick. We appeared to be saddled with a car perfect for a family of four.

We called the dealers. They laughed. “We’ve never heard one like this,” they said, helpfully. How much would they give us for the car, a mere 48 hours post-purchase? “We’ll call you back.” They didn’t.

A trawl online quickly revealed that legions of parents grapple with the same issue. Estate or saloon cars that happily accommodate five adults rarely seem to cope with two adults and three ¬under-12s in their seats, which means families of our size are increasingly nudged towards sport utility vehicles and people ¬carriers.

Having spent much of my adult life ranting at the evils of the Chelsea tractor, an SUV was not a prospect I relished. And people carriers seemed to send the message that we were ¬either going for more children (perish the thought) or planning to cart sports teams around on outings (no again).

More research revealed we had been unfortunate in our choice of a German car. Apparently, French and ¬Scandinavian women are more likely to want three children, so cars from these countries are usually geared to ¬accommodate their wishes (this ¬explained why we had once managed to squeeze into a Volvo hire car on holiday).

I thought fondly of our old MPV, now probably well on the way to ¬being sold for scrap. The multi-purpose ¬vehicle was the solution that served us well from the moment we discovered in late 2005 that our second child was actually going to be our second and third – only 20 months younger than their sibling.

But further – by now fairly ¬desperate – online trawling eventually yielded a glimmer of hope. Multimac (multimac.co.uk) is a bench-like removable ¬system of either three or four child seats, bolted into the car, with five-point harnesses and all the requisite safety approval.

It didn’t come cheap, but nor did selling the car back to the dealers. And unlike the dealers, Kevin Macliver of Multimac didn’t laugh when I said: ‘My husband’s come home with a car our children don’t fit into.” Clearly, he had heard it all before.

His invention was inspired by a ¬desire to get his own brood of four into a normal-sized vehicle. It took 13 years of prototypes, patents and costly testing before he was finally able to put Multimac on the market in 2008. With one of these, you could fit three children into the back of something as tiny as a Fiat 500, and – remarkably – four into a Ford Fiesta. There’s a rear-facing attachment for a newborn, which means a family with a third or fourth child on the way could save themselves an expensive change of car.

Kevin drove to our house to demonstrate the system. The neighbours watched with interest, having followed the new-car saga from the start. One emerged to slap Kevin on the back and say: “Well done mate, you’re saving their marriage.”

He may have done more than just that. For a little extra, we went for the four-seater Multimac rather than the three seats we actually needed. A ¬little investment for the future, perhaps. -After all, never say never again?…

Southwark council was unaware its parking fine collection page was case sensitive – nearly costing one reader dearly

Lisa Geary’s night at the cinema proved a little more indulgent than planned when she was fined £40 for lingering too long in a London car park. She appealed, lost and resigned herself to the outlay.

A few weeks later a notice warned her that since she had not settled the bill the penalty had doubled to £80. However, when she entered her details on to the online payment page of Southwark council’s website it informed her that there was no outstanding balance on her ticket. Several attempts to query the anomaly by phone failed were thwarted by permanently busy lines and so Geary transferred her attention to more absorbing matters.

The next letter from the council told her that since she had refused to stump up, her debt had soared to £120. Once again Geary entered her details onto the website as instructed and once more she was told that there was no outstanding balance. Bewildered, she presented herself at the council’s parking shop where the computers were adamant that she was in debt.

A bit of sleuthing on the part of an equally bewildered council employee revealed that the webpage is, for unfathomable reasons, case sensitive. If a car registration is typed in lower case the owner is told that there is nothing to pay; if capitals are used the full horror of the debt is displayed.

This makes no sense, says Geary: “As far as I can see, no country has ever had a case-sensitive vehicle registration system. If, despite this, you are stupid enough to have an online system that cannot connect an offer of payment for ‘XX123′ with a debt for the ‘xx123′ in your system, you should warn users to use upper-case letters.”

She reckons, reasonably enough, that this curious cyber logic has increased her debt since she would have settled the bill earlier if the system had not been so certain that she had already paid. Amazingly, it seems that Southwark council was unaware of this eccentricity. It apologises via its press office for the confusion and promises to explore ways to eliminate the case sensitivity or at least to warn users to use capitals. It will also shrink Geary’s fine to the original £40 since it claims there is no record of a payment.

Interestingly, though, when Geary subsequently went online (using capitals) to pay she was told she still owed £120. Possibly this difficulty is restricted to Southwark, but possibly it isn’t, so it’s worth being aware what a difference a capital letter can make to your family fortunes.