Civil Enforcement Court Claim, Defence Help Needed!

Alexe527 · 21 January 2019 at 5:29PM

I thought I would just do a quick update for anyone that finds themselves in a similar situation! We produced our defence to the claim submitted by Civil Enforcement through Money Claim Online and the case was assigned to the civil court in Derby. My mum started to get very anxious and was going to back down and pay the fine, which was now around £400 as she was scared about going to court. She stayed the course though and prepared her defence statement and submitted these documents to the courts by the deadline - as part of the defence we asked to see what CEL were going to submit as evidence (so far they had produced nothing of substance) and what other fines had been issued for the car park in the period my mum received her fine as we were pretty sure CEL were fabricating claims. She later got a letter from the courts saying that Civil Enforcement had not responded within the time frame and therefore the case would go no further.

As part of our research we did see a number of people on social media saying they had paid for the parking at this particular car park (which my mum had) and that CEL had still sent them parking notices and pursued them for money. Some of them admitted to being intimidated by CEL so had paid the fine even though they knew they had already paid for the parking! It's so disgraceful that these companies can behave in this way. I think if it wasn't for all the advice on here and a bit of support my mum would have also paid the fine just because the stress of it was getting to her. But I am really glad she didn't and that we were not the ones to blink first!