PE, LBA and afterwards - success story

KangaRoo

Although this is my first post here, it may be my last! I've been a reader for a long time, ever since receiving a demand from PE in November. I've followed the advice here, and have used it in dealing with the parking company, though I've not directly requested help from you. So rather than now posting a request for help, I thought I'd document my experience and hope that it will be useful to others. Please excuse the length.


This tale starts in early November 2012 with a short overstay in a free car park serving a retail park with a number of shops plus a fast food restaurant. The shoppers involved visited each of the shops and dined in the restaurant. They spent cash in a number of the shops, and on a credit card in one of them. They had previously shopped there, and were not aware of parking restrictions, and did not become aware of them whilst shopping on this occasion.


A couple of weeks later we received a letter from Parking Eye to the keeper advising that there had been an overstay of 20mins over the 3hrs allowed. A little research at Citizens Advice and pepipoo resulted in the demands for payment being ignored. The usual letters from the debt agencies were also ignored.


Keeping an eye on Pepipoo, and also MSE, suggested that we may eventually end up with a letter before action from PE, and sure enough in July this turned up.


We replied to this using the excellent advice from Pepipoo and MSE as follows:


Dear Sirs,


I am in receipt of a letter from you dated XX July 2013, which you describe as a Letter before Action, and requesting payment of an amount of £90.


I am not in a position to respond to this letter before action without further information from you.


This letter to you is a formal acknowledgement of receipt of your letter, and a request for the following further information which will allow me to make a formal response.

1. Your letter does not show clearly the basis of your claim. Is the claim for an alleged debt, for breach of contract, or for an alleged trespass, or for some other cause? Please clarify the exact basis of the claim.
2. Please also detail your standing in making the claim. Are you the landowner? If not on whose behalf or on what basis are you making this claim. If you are acting for another entity, please supply details, and a copy of any contract that allows you to make such a claim.
3. Could you clarify why you make the claim against me in particular, and lay out the facts on which you base the claim. In particular please explain how the requirements of schedule 4 of POFA making the keeper liable have been satisfied.
4. Please detail how you arrive at the amount of £90 for your claim; exactly how is this calculated, and what does it represent?
5. Please provide a list of the documents and information that you will be relying upon should a court action become necessary.
6. To avoid unnecessary court action, please provide the details of alternative dispute resolution methods that you are willing to take part in. I am willing to use Alternative Dispute Resolution to resolve this problem.

From the information available on the Citizens Advice Bureau website, and from a link they provide to the practice directions for court actions, it is clear that your letter before action does not comply with those directions, in that much of the information requested above should have been provided in your original letter. It should also have referred to details of the practice directions themselves.


Please provide the information requested above within 14 days to allow a formal response to your letter to be made. A formal response will then be made within 14 days of receipt.


You may instead prefer to issue a POPLA code immediately to allow an appeal to them, which would satisfy the requirement for dispute resolution.


You may otherwise prefer to cancel the charge.


Yours sincerely




Fairly shortly after that, we received the standard template 6 page letter of which many examples are on this site. We replied as follows:






Dear Sirs,


I wrote to you on Xth August in reply to your 'Letter before action' acknowledging your letter and asking for information that you are required to provide in accordance with the relevant practice directions.


Your reply dated XXth August 2013 appears to be a template standard letter that does not address the specific information relating to this case that you are required to produce, contains details that do not appear relevant to my request for information, and in parts are contradictory to previous correspondence with you.


As such, your reply neither forms a proper letter before action, nor does it provide the information necessary for me to make a detailed response to your earlier letter. I wish to be able to make a proper response to your original letter in good time, so would ask you once more to provide the information requested in my letter to you dated Xth August.


Please note that in the event that you proceed to a claim, I will ask the court to consider your neglect of the practice directions and take action thereon. As I am not represented legally, you are obliged to supply particular information as laid down in the practice direction, and the fact that you have not done so will also be brought to the court's attention.


With regard to your refusal to consider a dispute resolution process in order to mitigate any loss, I note that there is no statutory process governing time limits in such proceedings, and that you are perfectly at liberty to consider an appeal even at this time if you wished to, and should you not accept that appeal would be expected to refer the case to POPLA. Your own letter before action should have made such an offer.


You refer in your letter to having received '20 identical letters' to the one I sent you. Should a claim against me proceed I will ask you to produce these 'identical letters' to substantiate your claim.


Your letter goes on to name a contractor, but refuses to divulge any details that might identify them, and does not produce a contract as asked for in my previous letter.


Your estimate of loss does not refer to the specific loss in this case but lists a variety of business costs that would be incurred whether or not the event under discussion took place. As such it is not a genuine estimate of loss. As previously requested, please provide details of both your claim and the calculation thereof.


With regard to POFA 2012 provisions, you assert that the creditor has been identified, but we intend to show that on the paperwork in our possession this is not the case.


You go on to say that it is not possible to say what documents you will rely on, but the practice directions requires that you do. Please in your next reply include this information.


With regards to your request for further information, please note again, that for you to comply with the practice direction and make it possible for us to respond formally, YOU must first provide the information required and listed in my previous letter.


So, please provide the information requested in my letter of Xth August within 14 days to allow a formal response to your original letter to be made. A formal response will then be made within 30 days of receipt. (Given the length of your template letter and the detail it contains, this is a reasonable time for an unrepresented person to reply).


You may instead prefer to consider an appeal through your internal procedure, in accordance with the requirement for ADR, or issue a POPLA code immediately to allow an appeal to them.


You may otherwise prefer to cancel the charge.


Yours sincerely




Meanwhile, I'd also written an email to the retailer for whom we had a credit card receipt. Their reply was that they had made numerous representations to the landlord over time, but could not do anything directly. PE had referred in one of their letters to 'Workman', a company I'd not heard of, but soon found on the interweb. They provide services to many retail parks, but are not in fact the landlords.


A little more searching turned up a newspaper article covering the change of ownership of the retail park, which turned out to be owned by a large pension company. (It apparently owns many such sites). I turned up the email of a senior guy there, and dropped him an email, requesting help to sort this out, and pointing out our concern at the way this parking contractor was sullying the reputation of his tenants. His reply was non-committal, but indicated that he would refer it to the appropriate people.


I was now interested to see how PE would respond to my letter requesting the information that they should have already provided. [Particularly since I'd in the interim noticed that there was a discrepancy between what the original demand had been, and the amount referred to in the LBA and subsequent correspondence].


However the next letter that arrived from them was to say that “it had been brought to their notice” that the shoppers were bona fide customers at the shops, and that if we could provide evidence to that effect then they would accept that as part of an appeal.


The evidence (redacted credit card bill) was duly sent, and this morning we received confirmation from PE that the charge had been cancelled.


In a way, I'm sorry that we didn't get a chance to take it all the way, but have to say that the relief of having this off our shoulders is very great.


I have to say a very very big thank you to Pepipoo and MSE, and especially the regular posters on both, (you know who you are!) who do great things in taking up the cudgels on behalf of Joe & Josephine Public against these parking companies. I would particularly like to mention CouponMad/Schoolrunmum and xxxLazydaisy who have handled the recent developments with PE wonderfully, while also having to deal with their own problems offline. Thank you both so much.


To those who are still fighting, I'd say, read the information provided by the regulars on both forums, the answer is in there. Do also complain to the retailers, landowners, councillors, MP's and any other relevant Tom, !!!!!! or Harry that happens to be passing, as it all makes a difference, and is very likely to resolve things.


Ultimately, I think the key to sorting out these companies is a concerted push to make the retailers and landowners understand that allowing this form of banditry on their premises is a very bad idea. They have to feel the pain for having invited these guys in. I for one will be pushing my MP to look at this, and I strongly encourage others to do the same.


So that's my story, a big success thanks to Pepipoo and MSE


Thanks

kirkbyinfurnesslad_2

Really pleased tht u took the time to be bothered to let us know and good on you for keeping at it:)

Stroma

Thanks a great read and as mentioned thanks for taking the time to post the results of your endeavours.

Umkomaas

What a great account and a brilliant reference to how wronged motorists can take up the cudgels themselves and defeat this blight on car parks around the UK, without serious handholding from pretty stretched forum regulars.

Well done OP, and thank you. :T

zzzLazyDaisy

Thank you so much for coming back to report on your success - it is great to know that there are people out there, following the advice, and getting results!

:beer:

Just one further comment. If you feel that PE's Solicitor's conduct of this issue breaches the Principles in the Solicitors' code of conduct, as set out in version 7 of the SRA handbook - particularly to:

1 uphold the rule of law and the proper administration of justice;
2 act with integrity;
3 not allow their independence to be compromised;
4 behave in a way that maintains the trust the public places in you and in the provision of legal services;

(In other words, compromising their legal integrity by sending manipulative, aggressive and misleading letters, and failing/refusing to comply with the court's directions)

You should consider reporting them to the Solicitors' Regulation Authority.

The supervising solicitor for PE's legal department (which for legal purposes functions as a solicitor's office and is supposed to be independent of its client, PE parking services) is Rachel Ledson. She is responsible for ensuring that the legal department upholds the SRA Principles when dealing with members of the public and doesn't allow their integrity and independence to be compromised by their client PE parking services.

In my view their Stinky Template Letter breaches the SRA principles in so many ways, as do their LBA and LBCCC letters which blatantly ignore the rule of law set down by the Practice Direction. If enough people complain they will be investigated.

The full text of the Principles is here

http://www.sra.org.uk/solicitors/handbook/code/

and the instructions on how to complain are here

http://www.sra.org.uk/consumers/problems/report-solicitor.page#how-report-sra

(Ignore the first bit about reporting a solicitor to the legal ombudsman, that's for clients of the firm - scroll halfway down the page to 'how to report a solicitor or firm to the SRA).

Daisy

esmerobbo

Well done in your perseverance, makes me laugh when they quote that they have received the same letter 20 times, which are at least relevant to the matter. Then answer it with one we have seen 100's of times full of irrelevant nonsense!

Umkomaas

OP - please consider following Daisy's advice about reporting this to the SRA, you clearly have a great ability to express yourself and the tenacity to take the fight to the opposition unaided. But should you need help with this, I'm sure Daisy would be delighted to advise/assist.

Something does need to be done about the PE 'legal' juggernaut that is mowing so many down each day.

KangaRoo

I shall indeed look at that complaint option. I'll have a read through and see what's what.

all the best