Beyond POPLA

pustit

Hello.
I am hoping members will give their opinions on this suggestion to cost the PPCs more expense.

Going to POPLA is only costing the PPCs £27.50 + vat on top of the £2.50 they may have paid to DVLA. This is not enough, we have got to make them spend much more than this.

A better way to cost them more money, is to deliberately give a soft appeal to POPLA.
When the POPLA appeal is turned down the PPC will be emboldened to take it all the way to court. The admin. costs to the PPC involving staff time, stationery, photos of signs, postage etc involved in compiling their 50 page dossiers is not inconsiderable.
And on top of that they have to pay court fees.

Once at court use a winning defence such as "No contract with Landlord".
The PPC has then incurred this extra cost and gets all the bad Press in to the bargain !

I put this to the Prankster but he said a case had already been lost in court because a contract with the landlord was produced. So another strong defence point might be needed.

Whatever defence is used in court, providing it is a strong point, then it might be the way to go to hit the PPC in the pocket.

zzzLazyDaisy

I would not advise deliberately going to court unless you are either

[STRIKE]1 legally trained and know what you are doing
[/STRIKE]
[STRIKE]2 really really clued up on court practice, as well as the legalities of the arguments.[/STRIKE]

In fact scrub the above remarks - I would never advise anyone to go to court on one of these cases just for the fun of it. It is not fun, it is time consuming and potentially very stressful. Also, there is never any guarantee of success in litigation. The POPLA route works because POPLA must take on board the BPA CoP. MSE/Pepipoo have a winning formula and it is pretty much guaranteed that the RK/Driver will win at that stage if they follow the advice on the forums.

The courts only have to have regard to statute and common law - and even then only if the relevant matters are raised and argued before the court. ParkingEye is the PPC with the most active court claims at the moment and AFAIK they instruct a barrister to deal with those cases that actually get as far as a hearing. Statistically the average unrepresented defendant is much more likely to lose against a barrister. Even if they win the case (which is perfectly possible with help) the county court's decision is not binding on any other court.

If you are a barrister or a solicitor/advocate and fancy some fun, go ahead, we are all behind you.

But for myself, personally I'd rather take my chances with POPLA - or seek to head off any impending court action by making full use of the Practice Direction on Pre-action Conduct.

Stroma

I would not advise going to court on this, we know that judges give inconsistent decisions and when you go there its about fifty-fifty of winning. Better to cost them money and getting it cancelled at popla. It costs them far more than £27 to go there in time and paperwork. They are tying up resources into there as well as we are now waiting for 4 months for decisions.

bazster

Agreed. If someone with bags of attitude and very deep pockets wants to force a court case in order to drag the thing up the appeals chain until it lands in a court of record then good luck to them, but for most of us it would be crazy.

Orrin

Nobody should ever go to court on a parking ticket thinking they have an easy or automatic win. Currently if you want to play the system POPLA is a much softer touch.

If you want to cause trouble for PPCs you'd be better off complaining to your local council about planning or the VAO about business rates or HMRC about VAT. Also keep complaining to BPA and DVLA about PPCs that misbehave.