Senior Judge Spanks Civil Enforcement in Appeal Hearing

HO87

Just caught up with today's action. An excellent result and well deserved.

Having hopped from the GPEOL horse to the hobbled nag that was contractual sum, where now CEL? Seems like there can only be one mount left - trespass.

Who's opening book?

4consumerrights

HO87 wrote: »

Having hopped from the GPEOL horse to the hobbled nag that was contractual sum, where now CEL? Seems like there can only be one mount left - trespass.

They'll have to change ALL their signage again then - more expense!

Guys_Dad

4consumerrights wrote: »

They'll have to change ALL their signage again then - more expense!

Regrettably, probably not given that only 1.1% get to POPLA and fewer to court.

Being pragmatic, they will probably settle for those who cough up and pay their "fines" because they see the charges as such, and then, depending upon how POPLA view the judgement, they may still have a punt on POPLA,

No point in going trespass as the amount of damages to the PPC is negligible.

Interesting times ahead.

They have leave to appeal further though?

bargepole

Guys_Dad wrote: »

... They have leave to appeal further though?

Leave to appeal to the next level, which would be the High Court of Appeal (Civil Division) can only be given by a Judge of that Court.

However Mr Recorder Gibson QC at Luton said that, if it were in his gift to grant such an application, he would have refused it.

The_Slithy_Tove

Guys_Dad wrote: »

Regrettably, probably not given that only 1.1% get to POPLA and fewer to court.

I've been thinking on the same lines. While it's great to see CEL with egg well and truly all over their face, to some extent it is we who are ignoring a particular elephant in the room. That is:

• They will continue to issue parking charges based on a contractural sum (or damages for trespass/breach of contract, or whatever excuse they come up with depending on the audience, the direction of the wind, or whether there is an "R" in the month), even though a Recorder has declared that there is no such basis for the charge
• A good proportion of people will pay up without question, even though we know they are lying around the reason for the charge
• Another proportion of people will submit a weak appeal, lose, possibly lose again at POPLA with the same weak appeal, and ultimately cough up
• They will continue to use strongarm tactics, lies, deceit and intimidation to get people to pay up, even though the whole basis of their charge has been revealed to be a Lie
• They will likely still submit court papers to repeat "offenders", hoping that the defendant will fold before court, or even that they will get a default judgement where no defence is submitted, and they will be safe in the knowledge that their lie will not have to be tested in court. We know they very rarely actually show up in court against a properly defended case anyway.
• In short, they will still turn a healthy profit (oops, isn't it supposed to be pre-estimate of losses?), and POPLA fees and court fees will pale compared with the amount they fleece from the ignorant, the gullible and the weak.

Surely their continued use of the same tactics is tantamount to contempt of court (if only it were).

It will need something really compelling to make the whole house of cards collapse. This is just another dent in the armour. It needs lots, lots more, or one really big, binding judgement to breach the whole dam (to seriously mix my metaphors). All we can do it chip away and make the public more aware of the whole thing. I know some of you out there are doing more behind the scenes than appears on this forum. Let's hope it soon pays dividends.

4consumerrights

I agree with everything you state ST the challenge lies with:-

make the public more aware of the whole thing.

The word is slowly spreading - newspaper articles and word of mouth are helping. Don't forget that POPLA and the appeals ( IPC/IAS even newer) are still a relatively new concept in relation to the number of years these parking companies have been operating. The more publicity the better and the county court judges are now more aware in light huge numbers of PE claims.


EDIT:

Originally Posted by Guys Dad
Regrettably, probably not given that only 1.1% get to POPLA and fewer to court.

And the PPCs are even moaning about those that go to POPLA with forum aided appeals that are successful.

hoohoo

Currently only around 1% of appeals got to POPLA. This costs the BPA around 900k a year. If the public awareness is raised to double this amount then this will cause the BPA to squirm. Double it again and something will crack.

The BPA will be forced to bring the rogue operators into line or go bankrupt.

kirkbyinfurnesslad_2

The bpa help keep this figure low by not allowing the offucal appeal reasons to be changed.

Stroma

I think that getting a company like parking eye as vexatious litigants in court will go a long way to ending this scam. They single handedly could put the brakes on this so called industry. Another way is if every single person who has these tickets ignore the process unless they get a court claim, their whole industry would grind to a stop.

bargepole

Stroma wrote: »

I think that getting a company like parking eye as vexatious litigants in court will go a long way to ending this scam. They single handedly could put the brakes on this so called industry. Another way is if every single person who has these tickets ignore the process unless they get a court claim, their whole industry would grind to a stop.

Sadly, neither of those scenarios is likely to happen.

It's extremely difficult to get anybody put on the vexatious litigants list, and the fact that PE have won over 100 claims effectively closes off that avenue.

At least 25% of the great unwashed British public will simply pay up when they get a ticket on the windscreen, or NTK through the post, so no dice there either.

The key to all this is the Courts and the DVLA. More high level decisions like the recent ones, ruling on the unlawfulness of the charges, will eventually force the DVLA to reconsider their policy of automatic RK data release, no questions asked. Once that happens, the PPCs are stuffed.