ukpc

sonegunner

i recived a ticket because i was parked in a yellow boxed area but i was delivering to my place of work which is right at the side of the boxed area, i have appealed twice and they are still refusing to forget the ticket they are now saying that they will send it to the debt collectors can they do this with out taking me to court need help on this one thanks

HardWorker2010_2

Who is the ticket from? Where do they want the money sending?

Trebor16

sonegunner wrote: »

i recived a ticket because i was parked in a yellow boxed area but i was delivering to my place of work which is right at the side of the boxed area, i have appealed twice and they are still refusing to forget the ticket they are now saying that they will send it to the debt collectors can they do this with out taking me to court need help on this one thanks

Of course they can send it to debt collectors without going through the court system. But the debt collectors will have as much power as I have to demand money from you.................none! A visit from the debt collectors is akin to being savaged by a dead sheep, so don't worry about it. Just ignore the company from now on as their "fine" is no such thing. They have no power to fine you. Only a court can do that or any other body that has been given a stautory power in law.

ManxRed

I'm going to have a Derren Brown moment, and say 'UKPC'.

Is this the card you first selected? (produces three of hearts).

If this is indeed from UKPC then you should cease all correspondence with them, and ignore all their threats. Legally they do not have a leg to stand on in pursuing you for anything more than the actual financial losses suffered by the landowner as a result of parking where you did. Which is £0.00.

Also, due to a recent binding case in the upper courts, private parking comapnies can only pursue drivers for losses, if they actually own the land, which is 99% probably not the case here.

You will receive demands threatening court and bailiffs and all sorts, but in truth they would lose badly in court with such a case, and they know it - hence they will try and bluff you into paying by sending scary letters. Trust us, they won't actually try court, they'd be laughed out within 5 minutes.

Stephen_Leak

On the assumption that is is, as per the thread title, from UKPC ...

Firstly, the legal stuff.

Only councils, the police, train operators and Transport for London can impose legally enforceable fines or penalties. A private parking company (PPC) or an individual can't. Even PPCs call their tickets “Parking Charge Notices”, not “Penalty Charge Notices”. In law, they’re called “speculative invoices”.

Any warning signs are usually so badly positioned and worded, that they won’t have created a fair and legally binding deemed contract between the car park owner and a driver entering the car park in the first place. See The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997 and Excel Parking Services vs. Cutts, Stockport, 2011, 1SE02759, the Peel Centre case.

All the car park owner (CPO) can claim from a driver in damages for any breach of contract is what they’ve lost as a result. If this is a free car park or they paid, this is £0.00. Demanding more has been judged to be unreasonable and therefore an unfair contract penalty under the terms of The Unfair Contract Terms Act 1997, which is not legally enforceable. See Dunlop Pneumatic Tyre Co. Ltd. vs. New Garage & Motor Co. Ltd., House of Lords, 1914 and countless cases since.

There are also now two very recent court cases, VCS Parking Control vs. Ibbotson, S!!!!horpe, 2012 and HM Revenue & Customs vs. VCS Parking Control, Upper Tax Tribunal, 2012, where both judges found that only the car park owner can take drivers to court. The Upper Tax Tribunal is a court of record, equivalent to the High Court, and therefore its judgement sets a legal precedent.

What should I do now?

We don’t condone not paying or overstaying in a pay car park. If you do owe the CPO anything, then you ought to write to them, offering this in “full and final settlement”.

In any event, you ought to advise the CPO that they are "jointly and severally liable" for the actions of their agents, the PPC, and that any further actions have been judged to constitute harassment under the terms of The Protection from Harassment Act 1997. That ought to make the CPO call off the PPC and, hopefully, realise the potential cost of doing business with them.

Don’t appeal to the PPC. They always reject them. What’s in it for them to let anyone off? Actually, there is something in it for them: information. They need to know the identity of the driver of the vehicle involved at the time, because that’s who the alleged contract was with. If they don’t know who the driver was, they have to make do with chasing the registered keeper.

With windscreen notices, an appeal letter will tell them your name and address, and maybe who was driving at the time. If they don’t know who the driver was, they have to buy the details of registered keeper from the DVLA. With postal notices, they’ve done this already. But they still need to know the identity of the driver.

They sometimes say that they have the right to ask for this information. This doesn’t mean that you have to tell them.

However, even if you’ve written and told them who the driver was, it doesn’t make their actions any less unlawful. It just means that instead of harassing the registered keeper, they can now harass the driver.

What will they do to me?

The PPC, then a debt collector and then a solicitor will send you a series of letters. The debt collector and solicitor are usually also the PPC, but using different headed paper. These letters will threaten you with every kind of financial and legal unpleasantness imaginable, to intimidate you into paying.

But, they can't actually do anything, for the same reason that a Nigerian e-mail scammer couldn't sue anyone who didn’t pay them.

What should I do then?

Continue to ignore everything you get from the PPC and their aliases. It does seem counter-intuitive to deal with something by ignoring it. Eventually, they will run out of empty threats, and stop throwing good money after bad.

hammer68

please ignore i also received a trumped up charge from ukpc and with the advice of everyone on here i ignored all the threats from the debt collectors (2x different companies). mine never got as far as the solicitors letters as with the help of a contributor on this site i fired off harrassment letters to the land owner and ukpc and funnily enough two weeks later the charge was dropped. so please take on board all the advice as we have all been there and done it so to speak.

ps does anyone know where gtfa has gone ???

xx1100

he'll be back, think he's on holiday.
I'd like to thank notts_phil for some sterling work behind the scences on a UKCPS case, RIP hasbean RIP.