New free AI tool fights your UK parking fine for you
Key Points
- Parksy has launched a free AI calculator that assesses a parking charge and drafts the appeal
- The tool needs no signup or payment and covers signage, grace periods, machine faults and plate misreads
- Private parking firms issued at least 14 million tickets in 2024/25, a near 13% annual rise
- The CMA opened an investigation into Euro Car Parks on 15 July 2026 over its appeals handling
- A legislation-backed code of practice for the private parking industry is being drawn up
Parksy has released a free AI tool that assesses a UK parking charge and drafts the driver’s appeal.
The parking marketplace, which operates across 57 countries, said the calculator needs no signup, no payment and no account to use.
It sits alongside the company’s other free driver tools, which cover sign scanning, locating a parked car and filing accident reports.
A driver types out what happened, and the tool identifies which grounds are worth arguing before writing the appeal letter, including:
- Unclear, obscured or contradictory signage
- Grace periods on entry and exit
- Broken payment machines and tariff errors
- Number plate misreads, where a camera turns an O into a zero and the charge lands on the wrong car
Parksy said the tool will also tell a driver when a charge appears to have been fairly issued rather than drafting an appeal regardless.
“For a decade the automation has run one way. A camera fines you in two seconds and you are expected to spend two evenings fighting it,” said Daniel Battaglia, founder and chief executive at Parksy.
The volume of charges behind that complaint has climbed sharply. The RAC found that private parking companies issued at least 14 million tickets in 2024/25, a near 13% increase on the previous year and almost double the figure from six years earlier.
The Competition and Markets Authority opened an investigation into Euro Car Parks on 15 July 2026, examining the operator’s practices at petrol stations and its handling of appeals.
The regulator said it has reached no conclusions about whether the company has broken the law.The CMA also wrote to other private parking operators setting out concerns about appeals processes and unfair additional charges applied when recovering unpaid parking charges.
It said in that letter that it is currently weighing enforcement action against certain operators, which it can only take where it finds specific breaches of consumer law.
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“Being issued with a parking charge can be a stressful experience,” said Emma Cochrane, executive director of consumer protection at the CMA.
A revised code of practice for the private parking industry, backed by legislation, is currently being drawn up.
The CMA has recommended that the early payment discount, which cuts the cost of a charge when a driver pays quickly, should also cover the appeals service so that motorists are not discouraged from challenging a ticket.
