Is this a letter before court?

Dudleydave

Ok Keith will do, thanks for the advice and pointing me in the right direction.
Surprised at NCP gping to court on this, but I’ll still fight this, damage limitation for me.
Just need to build a strong defence as I can.

Coupon-mad

You are not the only one with an NCP claim right now, but they are all defendable.

Dudleydave

Ok so the process of doing the Acknowledgement of Service seems fairly straightforward, is it advisable to wait until the last day - Tuesday 24th July 2018 - the final date as mentioned by Keith above to do this?

I was thinking this would give me more time to get my defence together?

I hope my second question doesn't sound too obvious, but for my defence, should I mainly concentrate on the inadequacies of Gladstones lack of detailed evidence/defence against me so far, or the mitigating circumstances surrounding the actual incident...or both?

Quentin

It makes no difference.

Submit an AOS and it buys you an extra 14 days to send in the defence on top of the 14 you get without an AOS.

So do it now and start with the defence preparation

Read up on defences in#2 of the FAQ thread

Umkomaas

Dudleydave wrote: »

Ok so the process of doing the Acknowledgement of Service seems fairly straightforward, is it advisable to wait until the last day - Tuesday 24th July 2018 - the final date as mentioned by Keith above to do this?

I was thinking this would give me more time to get my defence together?

No it doesn't!

Then you have until Tuesday 24th July 2018 to do the Acknowledgement of Service.
Having done the AoS, you then have until 4pm on Tuesday 7th August 2018 to file your Defence.

That is your absolute deadline, whether you send in your AOS on the day you received the court papers or on 24/07/18. If you do the AOS after 24/07, then it's highly likely a default judgment will be served against you.

There are absolutely no advantages in delaying the AOS, only potential dangers!

System

I had to go to a nearby cafe to get change for the machine as my card wouldn!!!8217;t work, the machines fault or my card I do not know, then I paid what I thought was the maximum amount available but still managed to be slightly late returning apparently

What was on the actual parking charge as there are two possibilities here.

The first is that you failed to pay within the grace period indicated on the signs.

The second possible issue is that after paying (and forming the contract) you breached that contract by overstaying by more than 10 minutes.

The defence should be against what was on the parking charge which should have been described in the particulars. Which was it and if it was not the two above, what was the actual charge for?

The newbies thread is fine for ideas but you really have to start out with what are the facts of the case.

Dudleydave

Thanks, I will do the AOS tonight.

The timings of the actual parking after all the faffing about were, entered the car park at 12.08, paid the maximum on the board £5.50 which was for 4 hrs at 12.18. Exited the car park at 4.42.

I!!!8217;ve still got the ticket but not a photo of the signage.

So yes slightly overstayed but the penalty charge was disproportionate for those extra few minutes over.

Dudleydave

Oh and the charge from what I can make out is for parking longer than was paid for.

System

Timings are no use then.

You've three other chances to get this won.

a) driver identity
b) clarity of signs
c) standing to make a claim

So have you indicated who was driving. This thread makes it clear so let's hope they don't pick it up.

Secondly did you get or have you got pics of their signs and whether a driver would be able to read and understand them. One important feature of signs is whether the penal element (the £100) was made so clear as to be unambiguous. A lot of time they are not.

The third element is standing. NCP operate at rail stations so they may not have standing. The way to check this is to ask the local council who pay the Non-Domestic Rates. If it is rail land, then it is paid centrally by National Rail. The council's rates department will be able to tell you this.

All of the above takes time and you don't have that much so a simple rebuttal defence may buy you time.

Dudleydave

Apologies.


By rebuttal defence do you just mean complete denial?

I don't live near the car park in question so I didn't take any pics, I'll try google maps!

My correspondence with Gladstones (emails) haven't really been responded to, obviously the robo letters they sent in return didn't directly relate to my questions.