Letter before county court claim

lucymcdonald

Hello I would really appreciate some advice and guidance on what I should do.

I work at an NHS hospital and pay for staff parking within the grounds. Some times when I arrive at the site there are no staff bays allocated. At first I would ring the parking office and they would say you will either have to park off site somewhere or parking in a visitor bay but you will have to pay for a full day parking.
I did not wish to do either of these due to costing and lack of places to park as it is a residential area. I have received several parking charges from parking eye for not abiding to this as I feel as I pay this monthly fee I should be guaranteed a space. Until know all my appeals have been successful.
Below is the first email I received.
Appellant
v
Parking Eye Ltd ( Operator)

The Operator issued parking charge notice number .......... arising out of the presence at ...... Hospital, on 20 April 2015, of a vehicle with registration mark............

The appellant appealed against liablity for the parking charge.

The Assessor considered the evidence of both parties and determined that the appeal be refused.

The Assessor's reason are set out.

In order to avoid any further action by the operator, payment of the £70 parking charge should be made within 14 days.

Details on how to pay will appear on previous correspondence from the operator.

Reason for the Assessor's Determination

It is not in dispute that the appellant parked at the site in an area they, as a member of staff, were not permitted to park in and received a parking charge notice after this was observed by the operators employee.

The appellant made representations, stating that all staff bays were full, so they had to park in what they believed was a bay in the patient car park.

The operator rejected these representations, stating that the appellant was parked in an area they were not premitted to park in, so must pay the charge.

Considering all evidence before me, I find that, whilst I not all the appellants submissions, I am unable to take any of them into account in my decision. This is because, if they were all correct, this would not mean that the terms of parking had not been breached or did not apply to the appellant. This amounts to mitigation. The assessor is only able to decide an appeal by making findings of fact on the basis of the evidence produced by the parties and applying relevant law. As in the statutory schemes, the assessor has no power to consider mitigating circumstances of any description. This discretion rests solely with the operator who issued the prking charge notice.

Accordingly, I refused the appeal.

Unfortunately I did not fully read this email at the time it was sent and I ignored it. I now have received this letter.

Letter before county court claim

It has recently been brought to your attention that your appeal to POPLA has been unsuccessful with regards to the above referenced parikign charge notice, which concerned a breach of the terms and conditions on 20 April 2015 at ......... hospital. This charge is therefore levied for breach of contract. Further to this, you have been advised that the amount payable is £70.00 ant theat you have 14 days from the decision date to make this payment and that you were required to make this payment or further action would be taken.

ParkingEye is still not in receipt fo this payment. We are therfore warning you that unless payment of £70.00 is made within this period, further action will be taken and court proceedings will be issued, which will incur a number of further costs. These costs will include, but are not limited to £50.00 solicitors costs and £25.00 court claim issue fee. Should you wish to contact parkingeye you must do so within 14days of the date of this letter .


Sorry for this being so long, I am just very worried now I am going to be getting a few more letters like this one now.

Many thanks

Lucy

Redx

you probably will, then you may well get a court claim from Northampton seeing as they issue around thirty thousand per annum

as this is an LBCCC, you need to read the LBCCC fightback thread, which is in the crabman sticky thread near the top of this forum (written by a retired solicitor, lazydaisy)

Marktheshark

I would not waste your time on LBCC fightbacks.
Judges could not give two stuffs about protocol.
Prepare a defence, you have two options.
Pay or fight.

The_Deep

Beavis does not apply so they would have to justify the sum in court. As no-one seems to have lost money, this might be difficult

.

Redx

in future, dont appeal to popla using mitigation, it tells you on their website that mitigation will not be allowed

use legal arguments , like

no contract
poor signage
NTK errors
not a gpeol

and complain to the trust, as Jermey Hunt set out a new set of rules for all trusts almost 12 months ago, so ask them what they are doing to comply with them plus allowing you to park in a space you have paid for and any contingency if the places are full

if you pay for a service, you are entitled to it

by all means complain to the landowner on mitigation, but not popla , you can use mitigation with the courts too, if it gets that far (they have 6 years to try a court claim)

and get your union involved too

Umkomaas

I just wonder whether PE would take a hospital trust employee, who actually pays for parking, to court? I don't think I've seen one as yet. And how would the trust look if they were allowing a third party (as their agent) to pursue one of their employees in their name?

I draw on the Aldi scenario to be fairly certain that there are some organisations who contract with PE do not allow them to pursue as far as court. This hasn't stopped PE issuing LBAs to Aldi customers, but taking the final step to court? Yet to see one.

Now there's no way we can easily get to see an Aldi/PE contract - but we can get to see a hospital trust/PE contract via a Freedom of Information request.

@OP - follow Redx's advice above, but, in parallel (not instead), put in a FOI request to the hospital for sight of their contract with PE. You could also ask the direct questions:

1. Does the hospital trust provide authorisation to ParkingEye to pursue patients and/or their visitors to court level in the context of unpaid parking charges?

2. Does the hospital trust provide authorisation to ParkingEye to pursue employees of the trust to court level in the context of parking-related issues?

I've dashed those out; you may want to rephrase, but the questions need to be asked, and can be asked. Answers will give you a better idea of how far this might go.

Marktheshark

Good point on paid service, perhaps counter claim it from the Hospital who failed to provide the service paid for and thus created the loss themselves.

Drag them in to court and see how they like it.

lucymcdonald

Thanks for the replies it is much appreciated.

Lucy