Parking Ticket - Overstayed 6mins

Land_Registry

presc wrote: »

Just had a look at the HM Land Registry.
This is interesting, no where in their WS (or any letter from them) I can find the exact address for the parking. All I get is the street name and a postcode.

Turns out, there's 17 properties on the registry for that postcode. Stuff like train station or a pub are definitely not it (go figure), but all other entries (10) are just street numbers with no indication of what they actually are. Am I supposed to just drop up to £30 to hope that one of them will be it?

I don't understand how they can possibly go to court, claim that the owner of the land is XXX, where they don't even provide exact street number? Can the guy be the owner of the whole street?

If you search by address only then you will get the search results relevant to those addresses/post codes

If you are looking for a parking space, namely a specific parcel if land, then you have two 'better' options if you know where the land is
1. Use the Map Enquiry service instead - part of same online service. But you have to zoom in close to limit the number of results
Or
2. Make a postal Search of the index map with a plan clearly identifying the land. The result will be exact re the relevant title number which you can then check inline using the Detailed Enquiry option

DoaM

Welcome, LR rep, over here at the murky world of private parking.

Loadsofchildren123

Very helpful of the LR rep, but I suspect the OP has no idea where it is claimed the car was parked. OP have you tried looking on google earth to see if there's a car park anywhere there?


If you can't identify it, write to the C's solicitors:


Dear Sirs
Re Claim number xxxxx
I am the Defendant in the above claim. Although witness statements have been filed, I am still unclear precisely where it is claimed the vehicle was parked. All you have provided is a street name and post code, but this post code/address covers several properties and there is no indication which one the Claim relates to.


I attach a [plan/map] and ask that you mark on it the land which your client claims it is entitled to manage pursuant to the contract it has produced. [can you get some sort of plan/map/aerial photo?]


The final hearing is on [x date] and I therefore ask that you provide this information by [set a date].


Yours faithfully
etc.

presc

Thank you LR rep for the information. That helped a lot! I have checked it again and downloaded both the site plan and the document telling me who's the land owner.

The site plan they have provided there is quite confusing as it shows buildings that aren't there, and the map is coloured in 8 different colours... The document is 5 pages long so I need to sit down and read it properly.

When scanning through the document, the main info I found is that there are two owners (both companies) stated on the document, neither of them is the same one as in Gladstones WS. However, one of them shows the same address, but different floor, and different company name. I don't have a clue what to make out of this.

Could it be that I have somehow downloaded different part of the plan and it's showing me contract for one of the buildings in the marked areas? I know the land pretty well, and I'm 100% sure the plan shows where my mother parked.

I suppose I shouldn't be sharing the plan here on the forum for you to see?

Loadsofchildren123

You could do one of 2 things:
1. nothing, and produce all of this to the judge and say it's clear as mud and they can't prove their case about having landowner authority.
2. get to the bottom of it yourself - if the documents are simply not capable of being understood, write to the solicitors. Enclose the documents and explain that you want to independently establish who owns the site because you do not believe they have landowner authority. Explain with reference to the enclosed plan(s) why it is/they are so confusing. As them to identify on the plan(s) where the car was parked and to produce evidence of who owns that land (then if they don't, you then have enough information to do your own search to see who owns it).


Many people will advocate 1 - let the C prove its case.
I think this is dangerous. A judge may be satisfied on the strength of their say-so that the landowner on the contract is the true owner. So I would do option 2.

presc

So as I was preparing all the documents for the court hearing tomorrow I realised I got an email from gladstones last month saying that they won't be attending the court hearing, and that they asked the court to decide the claim based on the evidence! Can you even do this? I did oppose to the case being done through papers.

I imagine I still need to attend, but what could this possibly mean to my case?


Here's what they actually said in the email:
We act for the Claimant.
In accordance with CPR 27.9 our Client hereby gives notice that it will not be attending the hearing.
We confirm the Court has been informed and our Client's witness statement has been filed in
accordance with 27.9 (a) and (b).
We have requested that the Court decides the claim in our Client's absence based on the evidence
submitted.
Kind Regards

Coupon-mad

Definitely turn up, armed with all your evidence. Let us know how it goes!

presc

We won! Thank you very much to all the community and especially Coupon-mad who has shown continued support.

The hearing was actually very straightforward, I didn't even have to say much, almost nothing at all. Here's a little run down of how it went, maybe it can be of some help:

I didn't prepare as much as other people on the forums, but I still did a good deal of research prior to the hearing. Someone on the forum mentioned that wearing elegant clothing can help your case. I think that wearing something more elegant can help make you look more professional, and definitively show them that you're serious about the case and you actually "know what you're doing", meaning you probably don't want to just get away from not paying the parking fee.

Day before the case we printed all of the evidence and documents out, with 3 copies each. We stapled all associated documents together to form small bundles (so for example entire defence, directions questionnaire, any letters etc) and labelled them with sticky notes (e.g. Ex.1, Ex.2 etc). I didn't have any binding facility at hand, so we just left everything as those small bundles and put them into folders (cheap asda stuff, not too professional, I know).

For us, it was around 25min drive to the court. Since the hearing was in the morning we expected some traffic and we have left our home over one hour prior to the hearing. We arrived with just over 30mins to the hearing which proved helpful since we had to figure out a parking (entrance to our particular court was not that easy to find) and if I was to give a tip to someone, is to bring some change for the parking machine!

Still, with 30mins left we had enough time to leave the car, get through the security and go to reception. At first there was no one there at the desk, and there was just a register to sign. We signed it, and had a sit in the waiting area. When I realised the usher got back to the desk, I walked up and with a nervous voice told him I was the Lay Rep for my mother. At first he thought I'm the solicitor for the parking company, then he thought I'm a McKenzie Friend at which stage I just pulled out the Rights of Audience order and specifically showed him what I meant.

The waiting room was pretty intimidating, with plenty of people nicely dressed and even judges walking around with proper gowns and the special wigs. My mum was getting pretty stressed, but I tried to keep her calm and mentioned what I read on the forums - that the hearing for a small claim is typically in a small room, with a judge not formally dressed like this.

We didn't have to wait long before the hearing - it was almost spot on time, but the usher walked up and informed us that no one from the parking company has showed up and I told him they probably won't come. He called us up to the hearing room, which was bigger than expected, but still was not like a proper tribunal room. It wasn't us just sitting at the desk with the judge as I read on other threads - the room was fairly long, with one desk at the front, one on the side and a fairly big desk for the judge. There were microphones on the desks, but the room wasn't big enough to actually make use of them. When we came in, the judge just asked us to sit down and didn't even ask me to pass the folders.

The judge was pretty intimidating too, reminding me a lot of J. K. Simmons (if you watched Whiplash you will know what I mean!), but despite that he was rather nice and said from the outset that he is going to dismiss the case. He asked us some basic questions regarding the case, and he confirmed with me that I'm the lay rep - the usher actually passed this information onto the judge so it made it simpler. Surprisingly at no stage we had to show our ID's or anything like that (it's still good idea to bring those along, I imagine).

The judge explained to us why he will dismiss the case, and basically went over my points made in the defence - something I imagined I would have to do. He said that most points would not support my case (didn't specify which ones), and that many were addressed in the claimant's witness statement, however the grace periods points is so strong that he would dismiss the case just based on that. He mentioned the fact that Gladstones should know the IPC code because they have the same people behind the two companies. He also mentioned the point about the time watches not being synchronised which the claimant failed to prove otherwise. He even pointed out that the photos they provided (which had a time stamp on) showed even earlier time meaning it was less than 6 mins when they gave the ticket out. The judge mentioned that it's arguable as to what time the ticket was actually issued, but since the claimant failed to show any kind of response to the grace periods he just assumes that the photos and time on the parking charge notice are correct. He said that Gladstones didn't say anything about the grace periods deliberately, since they knew they can't prove me wrong - or something along those lines.

After explaining why he will dismiss the case, he asked my mum if she incurred any costs associated with the hearing. Well, here is where I messed up actually, as in the end I didn't prepare the cost schedule of any sort (I didn't manage to find time to do all of this) and we ended up getting money back for the travel and the parking (around £20). He said that unfortunately he can't take Lay Rep into account, which I knew would be the case. I know it's not a lot for the claimant to cover the amount, but in the end I was just happy that it's all over and I won't have to deal with any of this again!

The judge thanked us for coming for the hearing and thank me for preparing the documents in a professional manner. I think he was happy to see some effort put into a small case like this and that we tried to keep it professional.


Thanks again for everything! I wouldn't have done it without your help!

Redx

well done , glad to see that common sense prevailed

I am always banging on about grace periods and this is why, its a valid point for ALL these private parking companies

I am a tad concerned that you said you wont have to deal with any of this again

I would hope that with the help you received on here you would give back by helping others like we do , plenty of people are going through the process and are daunted by it all , so to have people who have been through it helping them (like lamilad and LOC123 do) would be great

great summary by the way

Umkomaas

Well done, I bet your mother is rather pleased.

It's very disappointing that there is no rebuke (verbal or financial) for the claimant not turning up. Very disrespectful of the court and total contempt shown towards the defendant.

Still, a win is a win!