Civil parking ticket de criminalised

itmakessense

Tunbridge Wells council issued me with a parking ticket when I was 5 mins late getting back to my car, I had a ticket for 2 hours and forgot which level I had parked on.
When I got to my car the wardens were still there, I asked them to be reasonable, but guess what, they weren't.

I appealed and my appeal was rejected so I wrote again.

After this I heard nothing, some 3 months later I received a bill from a bailiff company for £180 !!, there was nothing with the bill to say what it was for, just said that it should be paid urgently.
I took it to work and tried the number, it was engaged, then work took over and I forgot to try again.

The next morning I called them and asked what the bill was for, they said it was an unpaid fine.

They also told me to my horror that the bill had risen since yesterday to £460 due to non payment the previous day, I told them that they could not do that and they said yes we can and if you do not pay today it will rise to over £800 tomorrow and so on, then they would come to collect things from my home as a debt recovery bailiff.

I paid the £460 to keep the wolf from the door.

After calling the council they stated they had written to me (never received) stating the route of appeal and I asked for my day in court to argue over the issue of the ticket in the first place.

You have no rights as parking offences have been de criminalised so no crime exists, you do not have a leg to stand on.

So when you are told dont pay the fine or charge I would suggest you think carefully about it, I know of several people who have been stung in the same way as me!

Not sure if there is any way of recovering the money, I could have paid the £30 and had done with it.

I don't need to tell you what I think of T Wells council, I think they all live under stones!!!:mad:

Coblcris

Council tickets are a very different kettle of fish to the trash that PPCs dish out. Advice on here is always deal with council tickets, always ignore PPCs. You should not confuse the two.

By the way there is (or was) a way out of your situation with the council ticket.

king100

itmakessense wrote: »

.

After this I heard nothing, some 3 months later I received a bill from a bailiff company for £180 !!, there was nothing with the bill to say what it was for, just said that it should be paid urgently.
I took it to work and tried the number, it was engaged, then work took over and I forgot to try again.

The next morning I called them and asked what the bill was for, they said it was an unpaid fine.

They also told me to my horror that the bill had risen since yesterday to £460 due to non payment the previous day, I told them that they could not do that and they said yes we can and if you do not pay today it will rise to over £800 tomorrow and so on, then they would come to collect things from my home as a debt recovery bailiff.

From my previous experiences from baliffs, they need to justify the charges, eg they visited your house, made a phone call etc. I personaly would have questioned how they have arrived at this amount.

I mean come on £180 one day £ 460 the next. What exactly did the baliff do to justify that increase?(of course unless you live in the highlands of Scotland and he had to drive 6 hours to get there).

And then they said it would increase to £800 the next day.

IMO they have taken you to the cleaners on this one. I would ask them to produce justification for the amount they are charging. They normally have a set charge for call out and tel numbers. If paid on a credit card I would try and claim it back.

Taken from www.baliffadviceonline.com

If you want to complain about the amount of fees that have been charged by the bailiff, there is very little point is simply writing a letter to request a refund as the company will attempt to justify their charges by saying that they are entitled to charge levy fees, attendance to remove fees etc. In addition, although Regulations provide that you must be given an itemised receipt, this very rarely happens.
For this reason, before considering a complaint or legal action etc, you will need to request a detailed breakdown of all the fees and charges that have been made to your account….and the reason why those charges were made. This particular request is referred to as a Subject Access Request (S.7) which is pursuant to Section 7 of the Data Protection Act 1998, and which by law the bailiff company must comply with. (Many people may be familiar with this letter if they have tried to re-claim bank charges).

Neil_B

itmakessense wrote: »

Not sure if there is any way of recovering the money,

Ah! You got to the point in the end.

You can make an Out of Time Statutory Declaration. Contact Northampton TEC and obtain forms PE2 and PE3 I think. get this witnessed for free at your local Cty Ct.

More details on the site King linked to.
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