CEL - Parking Charge Notice Cancelled!!

Berribear

Just wanted to share some good news with everyone, CEL have cancelled a PCN issued to my Daughter!!

It got to the stage where CEL sent out a “Letter Before Action” and I responded with the following letter:-

“This is a formal response to your 'Letter before Court Action'. Civil Enforcement Ltd have no cause of action in law over this parking charge

When your company issues a 'parking charge' you do not use Schedule 4 of the POFA 2012, therefore you have no basis whatsoever to write to a registered keeper, except for the single purpose allowed under the DVLA KADOE rules, namely to 'enquire who was driving'. You must not use the data for any other purpose whatsoever, and certainly not to pursue a registered keeper as if the alleged 'debt' was their liability in law.

You have failed to supply any photographs or evidence of the driver, nor even the 'contract' (in this case presumably a sign), nor have you set out clearly, the basis upon which you are attempting to hold me liable. The charge is disingenuously described in your letter as 'your debt' and you have drawn up a draft claim form in my name, whilst failing to point out that this is/was a matter for a driver alone.

The driver's identity will not be supplied to a company like yours. There is no dispute that the driver was entitled to drive the car and I can confirm that they were. As the keeper of the vehicle, it is my right to choose not to name the driver, yet still not be lawfully held liable if an operator is not using or complying with Schedule 4.

Should you seek to proceed with a claim I will apply for it to be struck out, due to CPR Part 3.4:

(a) that Civil Enforcement's statement of case will disclose no reasonable grounds for bringing the claim;
(b) that the statement of case will be an abuse of the court’s process or is otherwise likely to obstruct the just disposal of the proceedings; and
(c) that there has been a failure to comply with a rule, practice direction or court order.

Breaches of the Pre-action Practice Direction (“the PD”):

Paras 3, 8 and 12 of the PD set out its purpose, which is to primarily to avoid litigation (para 8) by laying down a procedure which allows the parties to:
- understand each other’s positions (para 3)
- make decisions about how to proceed (para 3)
- explore settlement/consider ADR (para 3)
- support the “efficient management” of any proceedings and reduce costs (para 3)
- “stocktake” and review their respective positions after following the PD by exchanging information, to see if proceedings can be avoided and to “at least” narrow the issues (para 12).

Paras 6(a) & (c) oblige a Claimant to enter into a meaningful dialogue with a Defendant at an early stage by imposing specific obligations to:
- explain the claim in a Letter before Claim, and
- provide relevant core documents.

The only 'core document' you have enclosed is a mock-up of a claim form in the name of myself, the registered keeper. This will be drawn to the attention of the presiding Judge at the County Court Business Centre and then at my local Court, should a spurious claim of yours manage to get that far.

Since you have no cause of action against me as registered keeper, should you proceed with a claim I will file a counter-claim for not less than £500 in compensation for distress caused by your unwarranted demands arising from misuse of the data you obtained from the DVLA for one purpose, yet are now processing it for another purpose not covered by the KADOE regulations.

I am aware that when a counter-claim was heard in D6GM2199 Civil Enforcement Ltd v Mr B, at Bury County Court in May 2017, DJ Osborne found that the £500 sum claimed by the data subject defendant was not unreasonable. He accepted the argument regarding data misuse under the Data Protection Act 1998 (DPA); he accepted the tort of damages and stated that he was disappointed in the claimant bringing an unfounded case. Punitive costs of £405 were granted for unreasonable behaviour, and were paid by your company in addition to the £500 claim.

Further, I would like to draw your Legal Department's attention to a landmark 2017 judgment at the Leeds County Court, 3SP00071 - Blamires v LGO. This was a claim for damages including a matter of a breach of the DPA, for which an award of £2,500 was granted as compensation for distress. As is now relatively well known, the DPA’s original drafting appeared to preclude compensation for distress alone, but the Court of Appeal, in Vidal Hall & ors v Google [2015] EWCA Civ 311, it was held that this was contrary to the provisions of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union and that, accordingly, there was a right under the DPA to claim compensation for “pure” distress.

The award in Blamires was of “Vidal Hall” compensation, with the judge saying there was ''no doubt in my mind that the data breaches have caused distress to the claimant in their own rights as well as as a result of the consequences that flowed.'' The judge awarded a further £2,500 aggravated damages because of the manner in which the Defendant conducted its case, including the fact that, notwithstanding being told by the Claimant that its conduct/data was wrong, it took nearly two years for the Defendant to admit the mistake.

I expect Civil Enforcement to now cancel this 'parking charge' and admit its mistake in attempting to misuse my data, and in trying to mislead me by suggesting that a registered keeper is liable for a non-POFA parking charge 'debt', and that I could be liable for escalated costs/legal fees. As you will be aware, the general costs rule in Small Claims is that there is no costs order.

However, in support of my own counter-claim, I must remind you that under CPR Rule 27.14(2)(g):

''costs can be awarded where a party behaves unreasonably''.

I refer Civil Enforcement to paragraph 16 of the Practice Direction – Pre-Action Conduct:
''a party who has not complied with its pre-action obligations can be ordered to pay costs (even if the party has succeeded in its claim/defence) and there is also a power to remit/increase interest.''

I expect to hear from you within 14 days to confirm that the charge is cancelled. Should you fail to cancel this PCN and/or pursue a baseless claim without supplying any evidence of any breach of a relevant contract or relevant obligation, or photographs, or the contract, or your basis for pursuing a registered keeper outwith the POFA 2012, you may consider this adequate notice of my intention to sue Civil Enforcement Ltd, for the significant distress your actions have caused.

All letters exchanged will be used in evidence in court.

I reserve the right to include your client (landowner/agent) in any claim made, since that party remains jointly and severally liable for the conduct of its agents on their land.

Yours Faithfully, “

CEL then replied with a short and to the point letter informing her that they had cancelled the PCN

Result!! - A big thank you to everyone on here who helped, you know who you are!

KeithP

Good stuff.

But why have you started yet another thread to tell us that?

We now have five threads on this saga.

Now, would you like to copy that post onto your main thread - where it belongs.

Loadsofchildren123

Is this a different ticket to the one on your other thread? It seems to be, the other one was much more advanced than this one seems to be (has passed Defence stage, and you've written the CEL complaints to the court etc).
Well done anyway. CEL do back down when they can see a defendant knows what they are doing and will put up a big fight. They save themselves for the weak and nervous who cave in.

Berribear

LoC yes, this was a different case to the 2 Claim Forms that we have received from CEL.


I can't quite believe that they've backed down! I just hope the two Claims go the same way

Lamilad

Well done, you did your research, followed forum advice and got the result. Great stuff!

yes, this was a different case to the 2 Claim Forms that we have received from CEL.

But you did already have a thread on the go about this case and that's where you should have posted.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5729995

Regarding you other CEL cases please stick to one thread per case. No more new threads