Private parking tickets

jonjo808

My daughter has 2 private parking tickets and a company called civil enforcement is sending her demands for payment and she has told them with my advice that as she was not the driver she is not liable and is under no obligation to tell them who was driving.

In their reply to my daughter they say that they will issue court proceedings against her if she fails to disclose the identity of the driver. I would appreciate some advice with regard to the legal situation, because they go on to say as follows:

" It is quite widely (but wrongly) believed that Registered keepers cannot be compelled to disclose information of this nature if a car park is operated on private land. The relevant court order is called a Norwich Pharmacal Order"

They have given her 7 days (from 29/02/2012)to provide the information on who was driving and they say she will incur further court costs so is the advice and standard letters on this site correct and up to date?

vax2002

Her first mistake was writing to them, she now gets twice as much junk mail.
A NWO can not be applied in small claims track and even it could it only compels you to state what you know, if you dont know who was driving then that would be the answer.
However, this company have more hot air than a trans Atlantic balloon race .
They will be lots more silly letters as it is a scam that impersonates authority and changes characters to impersonate, they have tried the parking one, now they are trying the free legal advisor one, then comes the debt collector, then the fake solicitor, then one final act in the impersonation, A vanishing one.
When they move on to another mug.

McKneff

Same as above, absolutely ignore.

Your daughter is under no obligation to tell them who the driver is.

Coupon-mad

jonjo808 wrote: »

My daughter has 2 private parking tickets and a company called civil enforcement is sending her demands for payment and she has told them with my advice that as she was not the driver she is not liable and is under no obligation to tell them who was driving.

In their reply to my daughter they say that they will issue court proceedings against her if she fails to disclose the identity of the driver. I would appreciate some advice with regard to the legal situation, because they go on to say as follows:

" It is quite widely (but wrongly) believed that Registered keepers cannot be compelled to disclose information of this nature if a car park is operated on private land. The relevant court order is called a Norwich Pharmacal Order"

They have given her 7 days (from 29/02/2012)to provide the information on who was driving and they say she will incur further court costs so is the advice and standard letters on this site correct and up to date?

I assume she wrote to the PPC because she read the old 2009 article from Martin Lewis? But she didn't actually find the current advice on this forum which tells people every single day to IGNORE these fake 'fines'?

Anyway this has been discussed loads of times:

LetmeGooglethatforyou - please wait for it to load fully with all the thread results and then read some.

If she's up for it she could sue them for harassment (and the retailer/landowner who contracted the PPC, if she had genuine reason to be parked there). She's told them she wasn't driving and they've continued to pretend she's liable. As you know, she is not.

They are harassing her and a strongly-worded letter which is also sent to the car park owner/occupier could reap rewards - especially if she charges them damages and words it as a 'Letter Before Action' to put the frighteners on the landowner/retailer.

We have a member here who actually sued for harassment and got a payout, and another member who did as described above and got an out-of court payout.

give_them_FA

Let them send one more threatening letter and then sue them. These are the exact circumstances under which I won nearly 1K in damages from a company similar to Civil Enforcement.

The threat to take her to court is unlawful harassment. PM me for my e mail address and I will give you more details.

These scrotes need to be put in their place.

And yes, she can sue the landowner too. Hopefully if that happens they will decide the PPC is an embarrassment and sack them.

And yes, they are lying about the "Norwich Pharmacal Order" too. The District Judge that hears your claim will NOT be impressed.

esmerobbo

CEL and their Norwich Pharmacal Order threat! Seen this lots of times they are bluffing as usual!
Same as the phoney court claims they send out!

Just ignore the idiots from this point on!

N9eav

I am ignoring one now. Lots of threats etc. But not one demand in a recorded delivery envelope. How do they even know the letters are being delivered?

So far they have wasted £2.20 in postage.

I can see how the wording will have most people worried and they will pay to just make it all go away...

bluelight

jonjo808 wrote: »

My daughter has 2 private parking tickets and a company called civil enforcement is sending her demands for payment and she has told them with my advice that as she was not the driver she is not liable and is under no obligation to tell them who was driving.

In their reply to my daughter they say that they will issue court proceedings against her if she fails to disclose the identity of the driver. I would appreciate some advice with regard to the legal situation, because they go on to say as follows:

" It is quite widely (but wrongly) believed that Registered keepers cannot be compelled to disclose information of this nature if a car park is operated on private land. The relevant court order is called a Norwich Pharmacal Order"

They have given her 7 days (from 29/02/2012)to provide the information on who was driving and they say she will incur further court costs so is the advice and standard letters on this site correct and up to date?

I would send Civil Enforcement a strongly-worded letter quoting Section 21, Theft Act 1968. This is the offence of Blackmail and this the offence Civil Enforcement is committing with their unwarranted threats. They are also committing an offence under Section 2(1), Fraud Act 2006 (Fraud by False Misrepresentation). If Civil Enforcement is a company, the company and its management risk prosecution under Section 12 of the Act. As a lot of information forum state, these private parking tickets are unenforceable. I am lucky, I am a retired policeman and know how to catch these firms out. I also know that Parking Eye got a hammering from a court when they tried to sue a motorist for one of their scam parking tickets - it was struck out and the solicitors costs they tried to claim were struck out, too. All they could claim was the Pay and Display fee and court fee. Parking Eye were nearly £4K out of pocket and still smarting from it.

bluelight

give_them_FA wrote: »

Let them send one more threatening letter and then sue them. These are the exact circumstances under which I won nearly 1K in damages from a company similar to Civil Enforcement.

The threat to take her to court is unlawful harassment. PM me for my e mail address and I will give you more details.

These scrotes need to be put in their place.

And yes, she can sue the landowner too. Hopefully if that happens they will decide the PPC is an embarrassment and sack them.

And yes, they are lying about the "Norwich Pharmacal Order" too. The District Judge that hears your claim will NOT be impressed.

Thanks for mentioning Harassment. There is a provision under Section 3, Protection from Harassment Act 1997, that allows a person, being subject to harassment, to make an ex parte (without notice) application to their local County Court for an interim injunction against their harasser. The applicant then needs to apply to a Circuit Judge, shortly after the Interim Injunction has been granted, in order for the injunction to become permanent.

It would be useful to use this against Civil Enforcement and the landowner as well, who is vicariously liable for their actions. A company can commit harassment (Ferguson -v- British Gas Trading 2009). Contact your local Law Centre about applying for a Section 3 ex parte injunction. Oh, as long as the harassment has occurred on at least two occasions, the offence is complete.

give_them_FA

Unfortunately, and with no disrespect to Bluelight's former employers, it can be difficult to persuade the police to take up matters that are in any way out of the ordinary, even though, as he says, they are in clear breach of criminal law.

I would therefore re-iterate that the way forward is to sue them for harassment. It really is easy, they have no real option but to pay, especially if you include the landowner in the claim, who may be shocked by the criminal conduct of those it was duped into using as its agents.

And crossed with your later post, bluelight, an injunction is nice but a nice little sum in damages (Section 3) is better...

thenudeone

N9eav wrote: »

I am ignoring one now. Lots of threats etc. But not one demand in a recorded delivery envelope. How do they even know the letters are being delivered?

I'm not commenting on any other subject, but as far as postage goes, proof of posting is probably all that is required, as a result of this:

Interpretation Act 1978
http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1978/30/section/7

Where an Act authorises or requires any document to be served by post (whether the expression “serve” or the expression “give” or “send” or any other expression is used) then, unless the contrary intention appears, the service is deemed to be effected by properly addressing, pre-paying and posting a letter containing the document and, unless the contrary is proved, to have been effected at the time at which the letter would be delivered in the ordinary course of post.