Advice needed for County Court Claim for unpaid PCN

tom_p

Hi all,

Any advice would be much appreciated!

I live in a block of flats and have a designated parking space, on one occasion due to somebody parking in my space and no visitors spaces available (there are 11 visitors spaces for 160+ flats) I parked in an area the signs specify you should not park.

Some busy body from our flats must have taken a photo of my car in said area and I received a letter through the post from New Generation Parking Management Ltd claiming £60.

After previously receiving the same latter for a very similar situation, I appealed and the Independent Appeals Service said this;
Thank you for your appeal. Due to further information New Generation Parking Management Ltd has confirmed they will no longer be pursuing the matter and the parking charge has been cancelled.

I thought I had appealed this second PCN as I filled in the form but cannot find any acknowledgement email so maybe I forgot to click send on the online form?!

Anyway to cut a long story short. I recently received a letter from Gladstones Solicitors Claming £150. I was meant to get around to replying to their letter with reasons why I would not be prepared to pay the PCN but have been very busy and it slipped my mind. I have now received a County Court Claim for £227.30. I would like to contest this claim but would like some advice as to whether I have a case or not and how I should fill in the small amount of space they have provided on the form for my defence.

Many thanks for taking the time to help me in this matter!

Tom

P.S. There are always cars parked in the spaces the signs mention we should not be parking as there are only enough designated spaces for one car per flat.

Redx

first thing to do is acknowledge it online but do not put anything into the defence box , acknowledge only , nothing else

then read the court sub-section in post #1 of the NEWBIES sticky thread

and read parking pranksters court guide too

then do a forum search in the search box , with suitable search words like court claim or northampton etc, to find similar recent 2016 court cases

then read the holding defences they have written and draft your own based upon them , this is a simple bullet point defence at this stage, not the full defence which comes later in the process

once you have a decent skelton defence you can put that into their box, before the 28 to 33 days has elapsed from the date of the claim

the legal defence points that you raise will be the basis of the defence , not your "story"

The_Deep

Read the first three here


https://www.google.co.uk/search?sourceid=navclient&aq=&oq=parking+prankster+Gladstones&hl=en-GB&ie=UTF-8&rlz=1T4GGLS_en-GBGB547GB548&q=parking+prankster+Gladstones&gs_l=hp....0.0.0.28649...........0.

System

Thank you for your appeal. Due to further information New Generation Parking Management Ltd has confirmed they will no longer be pursuing the matter and the parking charge has been cancelled.

Suggest you send an email to the DVLA with the question "Does Gladstones know that the IAS can cancel parking charges".

The answer will be yes. Then you will get a letter from the DVLA saying NGPM have made an error and they are ever so sorry.

In fact, I've seen the exact same letter from another Gladstones customer only this week.

Edit: You will still need to go through the process of Acknowledging the claim online within 14 days and then putting your defence it. The defence is a simple one which is the charge was cancelled by the IAS (which is run by Gladstones) and the company (which whose Trade Association is supervised by Gladstones) know that the IAS decision is binding.

You have an honestly held belief that Gladstones would know this (letter from the DVLA supports the issue they know) but they are failing in their duties to the court as solicitors by trafficking in unfounded claims.

Coupon-mad

I thought I had appealed this second PCN as I filled in the form but cannot find any acknowledgement email so maybe I forgot to click send on the online form?!

So you had 2 x PCNs but can't be sure this second one was appealed to the IAS?

Certainly as it's been inflated to over £220 this is one to defend, regardless of no IAS appeal (a process which we don't recommend trying anyway so it's not relevant). Except you could include in your defence that it was your honest belief that both PCNs were cancelled/discontinued when the IAS wrote to you.

As others have said, get it acknowledged, leave the defence box online (MCOL) blank.

the signs specify you should not park.

So the signs are prohibitive and offer no contract allowing a car to park there? That will be part of your defence. Also dig out the email or paperwork you received and/or signed when the permits were provided and show us that wording.

- Did it mention areas where the permit could/could not be used?

- Did it mention that wording on signs also formed part of the contract/permit scheme?

- Did it mention £100 as the stated 'charge' for breach/trespass or not mention a sum?

Finally have you admitted who was driving in the appeals submitted or did you appeal only as keeper throughout, for this PCN?

The_Deep

... they are failing in their duties to the court as solicitors by trafficking in unfounded claims.

Should this not be brought to the attention of the SRA?

Coupon-mad

Forgot to say, there are greedy idiots who trawl this forum for their own ends and might send a private message to posters offering to 'help'. Such posters will never have over 1000 posts to their name and you never know who the idiots are because on t'internet, people can say they are someone they are not, say the opposite of what they mean and generally hide a nasty background/agenda.

So don't reply to any private message about this, tom p. We help on the open forum with appeals and defences and you can't get a better success rate than here or on pepipoo forum, IMHO. The BMPA can also offer free advice.