UKCPS letter before court proceedings

zzzLazyDaisy

seaweed5254 wrote: »

Thanks. I will check the first NTK letter. It happened in Nov.
I'm still waiting on what's going to happen next, but I might now send a letter to BPA & DVLa. How long do they normally take before they send one to court?

DO NOT WAIT FOR THEIR NEXT STEP... it will be court.

They are deliberately muddying the waters to confuse you. Put simply they have sent you a (non-compliant) letter before claim, and now they are treating your acknowledgement as an appeal - that's because if you send an acknowledgement they must follow the pre-action protocol (and they don't want to do that!).

I suggest that you write to them along these lines:

---

UKPCS Ltd

[address on 10 day letter]



Dear sirs

Parking Charge Number xxxxx
Vehicle Registration Number xxxxx

Please note, this is an open letter and I reserve the right to produce it to the court at the appropriate time, should the need arise.

I refer to your Letter Before Claim ('LBC') dated [date of 10 day letter], and subsequent correspondence.

You are a commercial organisation with access to legal advice, yet for some inexplicable reason it seems that you are unable or unwilling to comply with your obligations under the Practice Direction on Pre-action Conduct. May I respectfully suggest that you seek legal advice before proceeding further.

In the meantime, and for the avoidance of doubt, I wish to make it clear that I do not accept liability for the above parking charge and I have no intention of paying the money demanded by your company. Specifically, I do not accept that the charge demanded is in any way shape or form a genuine pre-estimate of loss. Further, I do not believe that your company has legal standing to pursue an action against me in its own name, since any loss (which is denied) would be the landholder's in any event. I am sure that your legal advisers will have advised you as to the recent cases in which parking companies have had similar claims dismissed owing to having no locus to bring a claim. For the above reasons, any court proceedings in connection with this matter will be vigorously defended.

Second, should it be your company's intention to start court proceedings, you must first provide a Letter Before Claim which complies with the requirements of Annex A Para 2 of the Practice Direction on Pre-action Conduct. Your letter clearly does not meet those requirements.

In particularly your attention is drawn to the Practice Direction requirement to utilise an appropriate form of ADR before starting court proceedings, which in this case is the Parking on Private Land Appeals service ('POPLA'), set up by the Parking Industry to deal with disputes of this nature. A referral to POPLA will avoid your company incurring the fees and expenses set out in your letter, and perhaps more importantly will reduce the burden on the court (which, as you are no doubt aware, is the reason for this Direction).

Please note I do not accept the self-imposed deadlines that you are seeking to rely on as POPLA has confirmed that it does not impose any time limit on an appeal to POPLA. In the circumstances I must remind you of your duty to mitigate, and repeat my invitation to you to refer this dispute to POPLA.

Should you reject my offer to refer this dispute to POPLA ADR and instead start court proceedings against me, I shall invite the court to stay the case and make an order referring the case to POPLA. Further I shall strenuously resist any application for costs that your company may wish to make, owing to its failure to mitigate, and shall instead make an application for my own wasted costs according to the provisions of Schedule 4 of the Practice Direction and CPR 27.14.

In the meantime, and in the absence of a compliant Letter Before Claim, you should place a note on your file to the effect that this charge is disputed and your firm is required to cease and desist all further contact with me. For the avoidance of doubt, the same applies to any debt collection agency you may choose to instruct.

Yours faithfully

PRINT NAME

seaweed5254

Thanks Daisy ! Will be sending out by post this response today.

So i do not need to mention POPLA once again ? I already mentioned that on the letter i initially sent.

Redx

popla is already mentioned in the above letter by daisy , popla being the preferred ADR and is mentioned several times

just copy and paste the letter as is , add any relevant info and send to UKCPS as instructed

seaweed5254

Thanks Redx!

I'll now go and post this letter.

Thanks for all your help..

Stroma

seaweed5254 wrote: »

Thanks Redx!

I'll now go and post this letter.

Thanks for all your help..

Wait until tomorrow, as you need a free proof of postage only available from the post office

37yroldblonde

Seems we're at a similar stage so I'll be sending a similar response tmoz. I'll keep my eye on this thread and inform you of what response I get. Good luck!

seaweed5254

Hi All,

Apologies for the very late update. I thought that this case has been closed by UKCPS having assumed that they have not responded to both my letters. Sinbce March I have received a letter last week, which was the same as the one indicating that they will take me to court (it's just the standard template).

Do i just ignore this or do i have to resend my letter again ? It seems that they are ignoring my letters as well anyway.

Can they still take me to court?

Thanks in advance for your replies.

Coupon-mad

Yes respond to it robustly as per the 'LBCCC Fightback' sticky thread., either use the same reply you did before or write your own version this time.

Yes they have 6 years to try court, as anyone does with any alleged debt.

Send a complaint email to the BPA saying UKCPS never replied to your letters which responded to an earlier LBC - attach copies of everything to your complaint. Email addy in post #6 of the Newbies sticky thread. It is 'not on' and certainly not professional or fair that they can keep sending out a new LBC every so often in the hope you will ignore it then they will roll on to court claim stage. Don't leave any letter without a response.

seaweed5254

Thanks. I will resend my last letter and contact BPA.

seaweed5254

Hi,

Just to confirm : Is it okay to attach the photos (before and after) and also to mention to them that I will contact DVLA and BPA so that they can act accordingly on their non-compliance?

thanks in advance