NCP Court Action

Matt246

BTW which Alexis on the user list should i contact?

ManxRed

AlexisV here, Alexis over on PePiPoo.com

I would seriously advise posting your details up on that forum, the Private Parking Tickets and Clamping forum.

vax2002

Are you sure this is not a blank form ? is it stamped and have a log in number ?
VERY IMPORTANT !

Matt246

OK will re post there too.

Form is definitely legitimate with court stamp, claim No etc.

WageSlave1_2

Matt246 wrote: »

Does anyone think it would be possible to come to an agreement with them now the action has started if so should I contact their solicitor or NCP directly.

You need to get a good solid defence in first so that you are negotiating from a position of strength. Obviously you could see if negotiations can be opened merely after putting in the Acknowledgment of Service but NCP/their solicitors may say "well, let's see your defence first". If the matter isn't defended then they will be looking to get judgment by default.

Any written communications should be headed up "without prejudice save as to costs" and any telephone calls should be conducted on this same basis - ie make it clear at the start of the conversation: "Can we speak on a without prejudice save as to costs basis?".

"Without prejudice" means that anything said or written cannot be taken as an admission or produced to the judge. Tacking on "save as to costs" indicates that after the judge has reached his decision on liability the correspondence can be produced so as to persuade
the judge to make some other costs order than the one he might be minded to otherwise make. With this small claims litigation - and anything under £5000 will be allocated to the small claims track - the general rule is that each party should bear their own costs but this is just a general rule and if the judge feels that the other side have behaved unreasonably in rejecting a sensible offer he might, in theory anyway, order them to pay your litigant-in-person costs or legal costs running from the date the offer was made or its deadline for acceptance.

As to whether any offers should be made to the solicitors or to NCP directly this is really up to you. If you had a solicitor acting for you he would have to correspond with NCP's solicitors and it would be a beach of the professional conduct rules to do otherwise. You are not constricted in the same way. If NCP's solicitors are being paid by the hour then obviously reaching a quick compromise of the claim is not going to be in their own financial interests but that said they should act in their client's best interests not their own and they may urge their client to take a pragmatic commercial view: if the claim is robustly defended then their fees may outweigh the value of the claim (unless they are doing the case on a low fixed fee basis).

Regrettably when someone employs a solicitor they sometimes disengage their own judgment to some degree and will want to defer to whatever course of action the solicitor thinks best. If you write to NCP they may want to run what you say by the solicitors anyway to get their advice. Nothing wrong with that really. Then again if NCP are just using this firm as glorified debt collectors having squeezed them for the best possible quote to the extent that it is cheaper to employ them than to do the work in-house, they may not be the least bit concerned about running things by their solicitors for advice.

If you do write to NCP then cc to their solicitors anyway. If you do write to the solicitors you can cc to NCP although, of course, the solicitors will/should put any settlement offer to their client and seek instructions even if they do not recommend it in any covering piece of advice they might give.

vax2002

I would not contact NCP, mark the form Defend the whole claim and we will help you file a defence of unlawful penalty and no contract.
Get the form back first, you then have time to prepare a defence, this is best done as late as possible to leave them guessing what is coming.

peter_the_piper

I suggest all this finally done offline due to lurkers.

Stephen_Leak

WageSlave1 wrote: »

<snip> I assume the post office will have a way of telling whether any given postal order has been cashed or presented for payment?

I recommend a cheque, not a postal order. Both give you evidence of payment, ie. the counterfoil/cheque stub, the copy of the covering letter and the certificate of posting. But, unlike a postal order, a cheque also gives you evidence of them either cashing it or not, ie. your bank account.

vax2002

You should not make an offer when you have a invoice it counts as part payment and makes your position weaker if they sue for the rest of the payment as you can hardly claim you dont owe what you have paid some of.

You should defend the whole claim.

WageSlave1_2

Stephen_Leak wrote: »

I recommend a cheque, not a postal order. Both give you evidence of payment, ie. the counterfoil/cheque stub, the copy of the covering letter and the certificate of posting. But, unlike a postal order, a cheque also gives you evidence of them either cashing it or not, ie. your bank account.

A postal order allows the payer to pay anonymously. Like a cheque it can be made out as payable to a certain person so the postman just can't swipe it and cash it.

I am pretty sure that the Post Office will be able to tell you after a couple of weeks whether or not the postal order has been paid in or cashed. It would be surprising if they could not

You could use a banker's draft/building society cheque but you can just buy a postal order with cash. With a bankers draft or buiding society cheque a record might be kept of from what/whose account the funds originally came.