urgent help needed following 2nd letter from Gladstones with 7 day deadline to pay

Lathyrus.o

Hi - I'm a newbie, but I've read through all the newbie pages and used the tips that I could in my first letter to Gladstones.

My car was parked in the bay allocated to me by the housing association where I live. (This is informally done and isn't in the terms of my lease.) PPM Ltd took over management of the car park. During the week of the 21st of November 2016 they affixed 3 PCNs to my car windscreen over 3 days and sent a fourth PCN in the post. I had not yet received my permit. The letter with my permit attached was issued on the 2nd of December 2016. So there was no way I could display the valid permit in November. I appealed on these grounds for all 4 of the tickets using the online system. 3 of the appeals were refused and PPM Ltd claim that they never received an appeal for the 4th ticket. Due to illness, I missed the deadline to appeal to the IAS. The appeal I sent to the IAS (and the £15 cheque) was returned to me because I did not have agreement from PPM Ltd to use the non-standard appeal route.

I received a letter from Gladstones demanding £160 (the original charge was £100). They are threatening court action against me. This first letter from Gladstones did not state which of the parking tickets this was for. I read through the pages here and submitted the following email to Gladstones:

Dear Sir/Madam

I am writing to you in response to the letter I received from you on the 23rd of February 2017 (dated 17th February 2017).

First, I deny any debt to PPM Ltd.

Your letter does not outline what the alleged debt is for and it is very unclear.

I am currently in the process of appealing four parking charge notices issued to my vehicle by PPM Ltd in November 2016.

I lodged appeals to challenge all four PCNs with PPM Ltd using their online system. I appealed against three of the PCNs at the same time. I copied the acknowledgement of each appeal into a Word document. The appeal against the fourth received through the post was submitted at a later date, and I copied a screenshot of the acknowledgement of this appeal into the same document.

I received a reply regarding two of the appeals on the 18th of December 2016. My appeal was rejected by PPM Ltd. As part of the rejection letter, the company notified me that there were two other PCNs against my vehicle that had not had appeals lodged against them. This alerted me to the failure in PPM Ltd’s administration of my appeal, since despite the online system indicating to me that all the appeals had been lodged, the company did not deal with my appeal against one of the charges. At this point, it was too late to lodge another appeal against this charge with PPM Ltd. I contacted PPM by email and notified them that I had already lodged an appeal against the relevant PCN but they did not reply.

Then on the 19th of December 2017, I received an acknowledgement of my appeals against the two appeals that had already been rejected. This automatic response acknowledging receipt of my appeals lodged on the 6th of December 2017 came too late to alert me to the failure of PPM Ltd to properly deal with the appeal I lodged against one of the PCNs. I lodged my appeal against the fourth PCN using PPM Ltd’s online system on the 23rd of December 2016. I never received any automatic response acknowledging receipt of this PCN, but the appeal was dealt with and again refused.

I am writing to request that you ask PPM Ltd to check their systems to find out what happened to the missing appeal I lodged, since it was definitely sent and the online system provided me with a message letting me know that the appeal had been lodged.

I am currently in the process of lodging appeals with the Independent Appeals Service. The delay in this process is due to illness.

I have already submitted an appeal against one of these PCNs to the Independent Appeals Service, on the grounds that it is invalid. It was issued on the 9th of December 2016, 18 days after the vehicle was parked on the 21st of November 2016. This PCN is therefore in breach of Schedule 4 paragraphs 8(5) or 9(5) where the time limits for serving a Notice to Keeper are specified in the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. There was no notice to driver (parking ticket) issued and so the Notice to Keeper should have been delivered not later than 14 days after the vehicle was parked.

My appeals against the PCNs has been frustrated by PPM Ltd’s administration of these appeals and I am not sure that it will be possible for me to lodge an appeal against all the PCNs with the Independent Appeals Service until the appeal I lodged with PPM Ltd has been found and dealt with.

I am continuing to appeal on the following grounds:

We are the residents of XXXXXXXX and the car with the registration XXXXXXX is my car. The Landowner issued me with the key for bay XX and I have been parking in this car park for years without any problems since the space was allocated to us. PPM Ltd has already acknowledged that my car was parked in an area where I am authorized by the landowner to park my vehicle.

The reason given by PPM Ltd for issuing the PCN and rejecting my appeals is that a valid permit was not displayed in the vehicle. However, the lack of a permit was due to delays in PPM Ltd’s own administrative processes. I was not able to display a valid permit in November 2016 because, despite the permit being marked “Issued October 2016”, the permit was not sent to me until December 2016. The letter that included the permit was dated the 2nd of December 2016.

I feel that a reputable parking management company should accept that a ticketing frenzy at the beginning of a parking management scheme before arrangements have been properly put in place, i.e. before valid permits have been issued, is not appropriate. I do not believe that a reputable parking management company should target a resident in this way and refuse to cancel parking charges issued to a resident parking in the bay allocated to them when they have only just been informed of the parking restrictions and the parking company have not yet issued the relevant permit.

Since my vehicle was parked in the bay allocated to me, there has been no financial loss to the landowner. The charge of £100 cannot be a genuine pre-estimate of the landowner’s losses and so I do not believe it can be justified. It is my understanding that guidelines require that the company should be able to justify financial losses as a result of any alleged breach of parking rules. However, the only reason for my being issued with a PCN is due to the late issuing of the parking permit by PPM Ltd.

I do not believe that the parking tickets issued on my vehicle properly identified the area where I was parked in breach of any parking rules. It is possible to park in a large part of the car park without displaying any permit. Please send me copies of all documents issued to me by your client, including the PCN tickets, since I believe that they may not be compliant with relevant guidelines.

Please can you also let me know whether your client’s threat of legal proceedings is founded on a contractual charge, a breach of a contract or trespass?

I also require an explanation for the charge of £160. Where has the additional cost of £60 come from?

I will await your response and until I have received explanations and documents, I will not be able to decide how to proceed with this matter. Furthermore, since your client has already acknowledged that my vehicle was parked where I was authorized to park, I feel that it would be unreasonable and vexatious for your client to proceed with court action against me.

I am writing to request that you put to your client that any alleged breach of new parking rules to display a permit was caused by the delay in their issuing me with the relevant parking permit. It is not reasonable that they issued four PCNs in one week a week before issuing me with the relevant permit. There was no parking without proper authorization from the landowner. I am writing to request that you ask them to reconsider targeting a resident in this way and cancel the excessive parking charges they have issued to me at the beginning of their parking management scheme at my home.

Yours faithfully

I have received a reply from Gladstones telling me that the charge was issued due to me failing to display a valid parking permit on the Land. By parking without displaying a permit, I agreed to pay the parking charge set out on the signs. They say that their client claims that they did not receive an appeal from me and therefore no response could be given. In any event, had I appealed on the same grounds as I now do, it would have been refused. A parking charge notice was affixed to my vehicle on the date of the parking incident as evidenced in the attached photograph. In any event, the contract was formed at the time of parking; whether there was a notice on the windscreen does not impact my liability to pay. Payment of £160 remains outstanding. In the event payment isn’t made in the next 7 days further legal action will be taken.

Please can someone advise me if there is anything I can do about this. I'm scared that if I pay this £160 they will just come after me for three more lots of £160 and I just can't afford it. However, they state that if I don't pay that additional costs associated with issuing a claim would be a further £202.25 and that if a judgement is registered against me then this could seriously affect my chances of obtaining credit in the future as this information can me made available to any interested parties via the Register of Judgements, Orders and Fines, and will remain there for 6 years.

The housing association has already stated that they won't get involved in any parking disputes, so there is no point going to them for help. I would really appreciate advice with how to deal with this, even if the advice is that I will have to find the money to pay it.

with thanks in advance

System

Contact your housing association and ask them to help

PPM usually do the following

1. Sign up the Housing Association
2. Put signs up and send letter sgiving 48 hours notice of parking enforcement
3. Start ticketing
4. Send permits some time after.

Find out from the HA when they signed the agreement and how much time PPM were given to get the permits out.

Others will be along to suggest other items like checking your rental agreement but check the PPM timings scam as well.

Lathyrus.o

Thank you IamEmanresu

I've asked the housing association for the dates and will see if they get back to me.

There isn't anything in my lease about parking, so that won't help. Any further advice much appreciated.

safarmuk

The appeal I sent to the IAS (and the £15 cheque) was returned to me because I did not have agreement from PPM Ltd to use the non-standard appeal route.

You got very lucky here - for future reference never use the non-standard paid appeal route with the IAS. As I understand it, this would have bound you to whatever erroneous decision they came up with.

There isn't anything in my lease about parking, so that won't help. Any further advice much appreciated.

Equally it doesn't hinder by saying you have to display a permit to park

I've asked the housing association for the dates and will see if they get back to me.

You should also ask the Housing Association to look into cancelling these four tickets as clearly the scheme is not designed to cost genuine residents £££'s and it also is impossible for you to have displayed a permit if you hadn't been given one. You should also suggest to them they look into these rather sharp practices being used by a company who they surely employed to help residents ... didn't they?

Redx

check that the letter is actually from GLADSTONES and not from DRP too

Lathyrus.o

The letter does appear to be from Gladstones Solicitors in Knutsford. I don't know what DRP is.

Redx

DRP is a debt colelctor , Debt Recovery Plus

if that letter says knutsford it may well be from DRP and not gladstones, check the BMPA zendesk and compare it , check if the address is their current address, check if the phone number is correct for GLADSTONES, or is it a DRP phone number ?

who does it say to contact ? Gladstones or DRP ?

sounds like a DRP letter to me , not Gladstones (so a rent a ltterhead to fool the recipient)

this has been discussed hundreds of times on here before now, have you read those threads ?

The_Deep

Is your HA a registered charity. If so, they are in bed with a most uncharitable partner. You should complaIn here.


https://www.gov.uk/government/organisations/charity-commission

Lathyrus.o

Thank you - I've checked the address and I did phone the office number given. It does appear to be from Gladstones.

safarmuk

It's tricky to know where you are in the process here until you answer RedX questions above. To help typically the flow is letters from:
1. The Private Parking Company (PPC)
2. A Debt Recovery Company (e.g. DRP)
3. A Debt Recovery Company but with a different letter head (e.g. Gladstones)
4. A Solicitor (e.g. this time actually from Gladstones)
5. A Letter Before Claim or Money Claim On Line from a Solicitor (e.g. Gladstones)

At various stages you might be offered a "deal" to settle (but it will still be > £100) until eventually you end up defending this in court.

But first things first - lets establish where this is in the chain above like RedX says. You can scan a redacted copy of the letter, load it onto an image hosting website and post a broken link here (e.g. hxxp:yyy.<rest of URL>) so we can see.

Also don't throw away any correspondence on any of the PCNs, keep them all safe in a folder for now.

Lathyrus.o

I don't think it is a registered charity, but thank you for the suggestion.