If it went to court and I lost, what costs would I incur

potandlid

I don't seen an obvious answer to this question in the Newbie FAQ, nor on these boards hence the post.

I have been issued with a PCN from UKCPS, if this ultimately went to the (County?) court and I lost, I gather I would be liable for fees - does anyone know how much those would be?

The PCN requests £100, looking here - actually I can't post links as a newbie but it's the UK Government site - would I be right in thinking I could thus be liable for an additional £35 (as claim is <£300) if I were to lose?

Could I also incur other costs?

KeithP

Typically you could expect to pay somewhere around £175 if you lost.

Are you planning on losing?

Umkomaas

£100 (parking charge); £25 court fee, up to £50 (capped) legal costs if they’ve used a solicitor. That’s about it, unless you’ve been a complete !!!! and behaved totally unreasonably, then the costs could mount. We’ve yet to see an unreasonable cost order against a private parking charge defendant.

Why do you think that your case is likely to get anywhere near a court?

Have you read the NEWBIES FAQ sticky, post #1 (which is all you need if the PCN is a recent one).

Have you complained to the landowner and asked them to intervene and get this cancelled for you - often a successful strategy.

System

£100 (parking charge); £25 court fee, up to £50 (capped) legal costs if they’ve used a solicitor.

You forgot the £25 hearing fee so £200 and not £175.

Or zero as they are so useless and you should win - and get £100 costs back.

potandlid

Thanks for the replies.

I hope this doesn't go to court and if it did I would hope not to lose, I just want to get a measure of what the worst case outcome could be. For example if (extreme case!) they had a fancy Barrister could I be on the hook for £1000s of legal expenses, from the above replies it would seem not.

I have read the FAQ, it's not entirely clear to me how much is applicable to my situation which is as follows:

• PCN issued for parking outside of a marked bay (we don't dispute this)
• It's a free car park (out of town retail site with multiple shops etc.) therefore no cause to go to a Pay and Display machine where you would typically see the carpark's TOCs.
• Car park was entirely full, many cars circling around looking for a space
• Had pre-booked tickets at the cinema (i.e at risk of missing the showing)
• Car was parked against a kerb in the carpark
• There were no double yellow lines where the car was (there are elsewhere in the carpark)
• There were already many cars parked in this fashion, none had tickets or notes on them
• No staff present to say not to park there etc.
• No obvious signs to say this wasn't allowed.

To be entirely clear, the car was not in a marked bay but it didn't block the car park, prevent access to other parked cars etc. When we left the car we genuinely didn't think that what we were doing was going to be a problem and genuniely didn't see any signs to say that a PCN might be levied.

Since receving the PCN we have gone back to the location and checked, there are no signs in the near vicinity to where we parked (e.g nothing within say 10m) and we didn't walk past any signs between the car and the cinema.

My understanding is that there is a reasonableness test applied to matters such as this. If that is the case then we feel that we feel that passes the reasonabless test.

Had there been double yellows against the kerb or clear signage then we wouldn't have parked there, the cost of a PCN is greater than the cinema tickets!

I'll re-read the FAQ now.....

KeithP

potandlid wrote: »

I'll re-read the FAQ now.....

That's good.

Stop looking for something to match your situation. The first few sentences tell you that these incidents are all the same.

Send the appropriate template appeal as the keeper, making sure never to admit who was driving.