The most important thing to understand is that parking enforcement is covered by civil not criminal law in Great Britain. You cannot be jailed for not paying a parking charge. You cannot be labelled a criminal. It is impossible for your credit scores to be affected by the collection process and you will not hear from bailiffs.
Whilst we cannot say that the law is necessarily on your side, it’s only concern is that the process is fair.
The landowners of the site where you parked have the right to charge you for parking there. They also have the right, under the contract rules displayed on their signage, to pursue you for payment. If you don’t pay, they cannot issue fines but they can send you a Parking Charge Notification (PCN).
If you have breached their rules (and the rules are reasonable), then you should probably pay the charge (and take the discount) but if their rules are badly explained, hidden or grossly unfair, you might want to dispute the PCN.
Take a look at our section about ‘Suggested Tactics‘ as you may be able to escape an unfair charge.