Should I pay..Civil Enforcement Ltd?

Little_Miss_Geeky_Kitten

ignore everything thats what i am doing, soon as you make any contact your !!!!!!ed! they have no legal right, i for one will be spending my time dealing with real criminals which is what i do for a living not knobbing around with these t****rs!

Hadeon

Little_Miss_Geeky_Kitten wrote: »

ignore everything thats what i am doing, soon as you make any contact your !!!!!!ed! they have no legal right, i for one will be spending my time dealing with real criminals which is what i do for a living not knobbing around with these t****rs!

IMO they ARE real criminals & it's about time the police/CPS took an interest.
There's more than enough 'evidence of system' out there.

rickbonar

Yes posting threatening letters and demanding money with menaces are both a criminal offence.

rickbonar

(below borrowed from another site)





Administration of Justice Act 1970

"Punishment for unlawful harassment of debtors.”

1. A person commits an offence if, with the object of coercing a person to pay money claimed from the other as a debt due under a contract he:

harasses the other with demands for payment which, in respect of their frequency, the manner or occasion of making any such demand, or of any threat or publicity by which any demand is accompanied, are calculated to subject him or his family or household to alarm, distress or humiliation
falsely represents, in relation to the money claimed, that criminal proceedings lie for failure to pay for it
utters a document falsely represented by him to have some official character, or purporting to have some official character which he knows it has not
2. A person may be guilty of an offence by virtue of sub-section (1)(a) above if he concerts with others in the taking of such actions as is described in that paragraph, notwithstanding that his own course of conduct does not by itself amount to harassment.



Theft Act 1978

"21. Blackmail". —

(1) A person is guilty of blackmail if, with a view to gain for himself or another or with intent to cause loss to another, he makes any unwarranted demand with menaces; and for this purpose a demand with menaces is unwarranted unless the person making it does so in the belief—
(a) that he has reasonable grounds for making the demand; and
(b)that the use of the menaces is a proper means of reinforcing the demand.
(2) The nature of the act or omission demanded is immaterial, and it is also immaterial whether the menaces relate to action to be taken by the person making the demand.
(3) A person guilty of blackmail shall on conviction on indictment be liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding fourteen years.

HO87

s.40 is always difficult to prove in respect of the necessity to show the element of "calculation" and that it is criminal proceedings that will ensue.

Blackmail is similarly difficult to prove in the case of a civil dispute because of the criminal burden of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) and that the alleged offender did not have reasonable grounds for his demands.

I much prefer s.1 Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Far broader definition and whilst s.1 is often pursued by way of the criminal courts, people often forget about s.3 which allows for cases to be taken through the civil courts where there is specific provision for the claiming of damages for anxiety and, of course, a far lower burden of proof (balance of probabilities).

If you wanted to understand the full import - and impact - of civil proceedings in respect of harassment under these section then have a read of the judgment from the case of Ferguson v. British Gas Trading Ltd [2009] EWCA Civ 46. A case that BG would prefer did not become widely known and one that they undoubtedly would have wished never to have have happened. The judgment is rather long but thoroughly worth the read.

You get a flavour from the opening sentence of Jacobs LJ,:

It is one of the glories of this country that every now and then one of its citizens is prepared to take a stand against the big battalions of government or industry.

Sirdan

HO87 wrote: »

s.40 is always difficult to prove in respect of the necessity to show the element of "calculation" and that it is criminal proceedings that will ensue.

Blackmail is similarly difficult to prove in the case of a civil dispute because of the criminal burden of proof (i.e. beyond reasonable doubt) and that the alleged offender did not have reasonable grounds for his demands.

I much prefer s.1 Protection from Harassment Act 1997. Far broader definition and whilst s.1 is often pursued by way of the criminal courts, people often forget about s.3 which allows for cases to be taken through the civil courts where there is specific provision for the claiming of damages for anxiety and, of course, a far lower burden of proof (balance of probabilities).

If you wanted to understand the full import - and impact - of civil proceedings in respect of harassment under these section then have a read of the judgment from the case of Ferguson v. British Gas Trading Ltd [2009] EWCA Civ 46. A case that BG would prefer did not become widely known and one that they undoubtedly would have wished never to have have happened. The judgment is rather long but thoroughly worth the read.

You get a flavour from the opening sentence of Jacobs LJ,:

Always makes me smile ,coz British Gas did pretty much the same to me long before this case ..they sent all sorts of letters claiming a 3 figure sum ...to cut a long story short after several months of letters and phone calls I ended up telling them to take me to court or f off...and lo and behold a full and final bill arrived for £5 ..whenever their reps cold call to sell my dear wife tells them to run like hell because if I come to the door they are in grave danger :-)

I wouldn't have gas from BG if it were free ,they are worse than any PPC.

janegi

Thanks to all for info on Civil Enforcement. Having been away sorting family out I got back home to find a Parking Contravention notice demanding that I pay £90 for parking at a station carpark for about 5 hours and that if I wanted proof I would have to pay £10 for the photo. Looking at the times given it would tally with when I picked up my niece in the nearby Co-op car park and when I later dropped her off at the drop off point at the station. In between those times we had visited my mother in a care home, been back to my mother's house to get a call from my sister in Tunisia, sat on the internet for sometime looking for flights to Paris, during which my car was parked in my mother's parking spot and had been seen by neighbours and the Tesco delivery van who had kindly moved to let me in. How this 'Civil Enforcement' can prove that I was parked in the station car park during that time I do not know. Thanks to the comments given here I will ignore the 'Enforcement Notice' and see what happens next.

Coupon-mad

janegi wrote: »

Thanks to the comments given here I will ignore the 'Enforcement Notice' and see what happens next.

This shows what letters happen next, do not be intimidated:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/2214803

The letters from Newlyn are among the worst for lies and misleading information suggesting bailiffs will call (cannot happen). Wait for those to arrive, collect them up, take copies and make a complaint to the OfT and your MP:

OFT http://www.oft.gov.uk/ complaints about debt collectors for the attention of James Waldron

Local MP via http://www.writetothem.com/

HTH

mandragora_2

Thanks for the link - great and heartening reading. Here's some of my favourite highlights from the judge's final ruling:

I would think it entirely proper for a prosecutor such as a Trading Standards Officer, to bring criminal proceedings in respect of a case where there has been such a period of persistent conduct and such threats as are pleaded here.

1. What British Gas was threatening was undoubtedly serious. Mr Porter sought to downgrade it by saying that Ms Ferguson knew the claims and threats were unjustified. That is absurd: a victim of harassment will almost always know that it is unjustified. The Act is there to protect people against unjustified harassment. Indeed if the impugned conduct is justified it is unlikely to amount to harassment at all.
   
2. Mr Porter also made the point that the correspondence was computer generated and so, for some reason which I do not really follow, Ms Ferguson should not have taken it as seriously as if it had come from an individual. But real people are responsible for programming and entering material into the computer. It is British Gas's system which, at the very least, allowed the impugned conduct to happen.

Moreover the threats and demands were to be read by a real person, not by a computer. A real person is likely to suffer real anxiety and distress if threatened in the way which Ms Ferguson was. And a real person is unlikely to take comfort from knowing that the claims and threats are unjustified or that they were sent by a computer system: that will not necessarily allay the fear that the threats will not be carried out. How is a consumer such as Ms Ferguson to know whether or not, for instance, a threat such as "we will tell a credit reference agency in the next 10 days that you have not paid" (letter of 2nd January) will not be carried out by the same computer system which sent the unjustified letter and all its predecessor bills and threats? After all no amount of writing and telephoning had stopped the system so far – at times it must have seemed like a monster machine out of control moving relentlessly forward – a million miles from the "world class level of service" (letter of 9th January) which British Gas says it aims to offer.

and my favourite of all, the opening statement:

It is one of the glories of this country that every now and then one of its citizens is prepared to take a stand against the big battalions of government or industry.

Lilly-May

I have just received a fine from these people too. I parked in a car park in Coulsden, Surrey on Bank Holiday Monday (yes Bank Holiday Monday) from 18:16:57 and left (according to them) at 18:36:37 whilst I ran in and grabbed a couple of items from Tescos.

They are trying to say that I owe them £150 but if I pay within 14 days they will knock it down to £75! (There's generous for you!) This has got to be the most expensive 20 minutes parking I've ever incurred.

I do not know the area well and didn't think that the car park would be operative after 6pm bearing in mind that it services the shops in the High Street (the only shop being open at that time was Tescos) and more importantly that it was a Bank Holiday.

Like all the other people on here that have received demands from this firm, I initially thought I should pay, but after reading your responses. I will sit back and wait to see what happens.

Thank you MoneySavingExpert and other posters for your helpful advice. :beer: