cheers richard, just to clarify, these private company's need to go to court before a bailiff comes round...

A private company can take you to court, however the reason they wont is that the court will only re-imburse actual cost.

That's the cost the company has incurred by you overstaying your ticket by 20 minutes for example.

If you've ever tried to take someone to the small claims court, you are only allowed to charge the actual cost to you, you cant then start adding charges on top of this. The court may rule that by parking in a space and not buying a ticket you owe the price of the ticket, or by overstaying your time you prevented someone else from buying a ticket so you owe them for half of their ticket. Again difficult to argue if the car park was half empty as their costs as a direct action of you being there would be 0p 

scarey wrote:

cheers richard, just to clarify, these private company's need to go to court before a bailiff comes round...

Exactly.
As Dan says, they don't do court as it's not cost effective.
So they rely of scaring people into paying with offical looking letters.

If a debt collector calls, which I've never heard of, you just tell them to off !
They have no legal power at all to make you pay.

good to know where you stand in these cases...

excellent info guys... Thanks