County court claim form received

VWdriver

Good Morning All,

Received a county court claim form this weekend after foolishly expecting the gym (whose car park I parked in) to fight my case with the parking management.

Overview -

The gym is on a shared site with other warehouses/businesses. They share a car park and provide the gym members with a hand written permit to coincide with your membership. I place this on my dash every time I park there however this time the permit must have blown on the floor when the door shut.
The car park itself is a shoddy affair, as is the whole site.
I received a yellow fine on my screen and told the gym who said they are unhappy with this happening to their customers and would sort it out for me.
I then received a letter from the parking firm and then a gladstones letter. I told the gym who asked me to forward them the letter for them to help.
Now I've received a court letter and wish I would have just sorted it myself at the first stage rather than believing the gym would sort it for me.

I've looked through the site and understand how to appeal at the first stage however now it is at the court stage I feel this is out of my depths.

Do I still have a chance to sort this or am I going to have to pay the ludicrous £237.63

Any help or direction would be greatly appreciated.

System

who said they are unhappy with this happening to their customers and would sort it out for me.

Did you get this in writing or by email? If not can you get the Gym to put it in writing.

The whole basis of these tickets is for the PPC to enforce the client's wishes - and not the stuff the PPC thinks up. So see if the Gym (if they are the ones that hired the PPC) can confirm the PPC is acting against their wishes.

Umkomaas

Copy the gym in on your court claim papers (to show you're not bluffing) and tell them that you will be requiring them to attend as a witness at the hearing. Ask who will be representing them, and to provide you with a list of dates when that person won't be available so the court can set a date around his/her confirmed availability.

That will help focus their minds, and put the other end of their body in gear!

VWdriver

IamEmanresu wrote: »

Did you get this in writing or by email? If not can you get the Gym to put it in writing.

The whole basis of these tickets is for the PPC to enforce the client's wishes - and not the stuff the PPC thinks up. So see if the Gym (if they are the ones that hired the PPC) can confirm the PPC is acting against their wishes.

This is what the gym originally to me by email -

To explain you the situation shortly:
We are lease holders to the unit and have nothing to do with the land for the parking.
Our landlord is also a leaseholder (main leaseholder to all units) not an Owner of the land.
So they hired them the parking management company to run the parking and now those idiots refuse to cancel tickets for us even though our customers have right to park on the parking so I'm doing every to my powers to fight them.
Unfortunately the parking system here in UK is horrible and those parking companies count on scare tactics to make some money.
I am working with some very knowledgeable people to try and resolve the issue.
I've been advised that you will be most likely better off not contacting them until you get letter for court where you can make strong defense (for which I'm ready to help) and then even counterclaim for your your expenses

VWdriver

Ok working through the sticky i've submitted my Acknowledgment of Service as per the guide.
Now i'm lost and confused how to structure an actual defense.

Are there any rough templates available?

peter_the_piper

Have you checked the court to confirm genuine claim?

Redx

yes there are (sort of) - read existing defences from 2017 ONLY !

if the PPC is a BPA member , look for and read maybe ten or more defences written on here by people already going through the process

OR if the PPC is an IPC member , look for and read maybe ten or more defences written on here by people already going through the process

so if its a solicitor who issued the MCOL , like GLADSTONES , read about ten defences against them

then draft your own defence based on those other "live" defences

each defence is bespoke , so there is no single one that can be a template for all , but if you draft yours from an existing one (or from several) , you woint be starting from scratch

post #2 of the NEWBIES sticky thread has some examples

as you have not named the PPC and/or the solicitors , its hard to advise you

and it must be a live court claim if the OP has completed the acknowledgement online ? (ie:- not the paperwork)

VWdriver

Thanks for the info.

Yes acknowledgement was completed online so claim is live.

PPC are - Parking and Property management limited

Solicitors are - Gladstones

Redx

plenty of GLADSTONES defences on here , dozens in fact

read about ten , get the gist , draft your own , then think about what matters in your case once 90% of the work is done