Letter before claim - Parking Ticket at my office car park - POPLA appeal rejected.

Daman1985

The Deep - Thank you for posting that, its certainly interesting reading! i'll add an "abuse of process" paragraph to my defence as there is a random £60 been added. I also live in Southampton so will be requesting that court, if i'm really lucky i might get the DJ who threw out the original case.

I'll have a look at complaining to the MP, though i cant imagine anything will get done by the MP before my case is long over and done with, still worth it if it saves someone else a year and half of hasstle!

Keith - Issue date is the 6th September, if i'm reading the form right then that mean the service date is the 11th Sept and I have to reply by the 25th.

And yes, its come from the county court business centre in Northampton. is there some significance to that im not aware of?

nosferatu1001

No, it means youve missed the part on the form about acknowledging service - meanin gyou would get 33 days in total, not just 19
Go online
Newbies thread, post 2, tells you how. Do this first, before anything else.

Yes it means it hasnt been issued manually.

Daman1985

Ah yes, sorry i wasnt clear, i had clocked that i can acknowledge first and then submit the defense after a couple of weeks later, though barring extra time to write the defence i didn't really see much advantage to do them separately?

Got to love a Robo-Claim!

KeithP

Daman1985 wrote: »

Keith - Issue date is the 6th September, if i'm reading the form right then that mean the service date is the 11th Sept and I have to reply by the 25th.

With a Claim Issue Date of 6th September, you have until Wednesday 25th September to do the Acknowledgement of Service, but there is nothing to be gained by delaying it. To do the AoS, follow the guidance offered in a Dropbox file linked from post #2 of the NEWBIES FAQ sticky thread. About ten minutes work - no thinking required.

Having done the AoS, you have until 4pm on Wednesday 9th October 2019 to file your Defence.

That's nearly four weeks away. Plenty of time to produce a Defence, but please don't leave it to the last minute.


When you are happy with the content, your Defence could be filed via email as suggested here:

Print your Defence.
1. Sign it and date it.
   
2. Scan the signed document back in and save it as a pdf.
   
3. Send that pdf as an email attachment to CCBCAQ@Justice.gov.uk
   
4. Just put the claim number and the word Defence in the email title, and in the body of the email something like 'Please find my Defence attached'.
   
5. Log into MCOL after a few days to see if the Claim is marked "defence received". If not chase the CCBC until it is.
   
6. Do not be surprised to receive an early copy of the Claimant's Directions Questionnaire, they are just trying to keep you under pressure.
   
7. Wait for your DQ from the CCBC, or download one from the internet, and then re-read post #2 of the NEWBIES FAQ sticky thread to find out exactly what to do with it.

Daman1985 wrote: »

And yes, its come from the county court business centre in Northampton. is there some significance to that im not aware of?

By far the vast majority of claims we see come from the CCBC, but it would be silly to assume all of them come from there. Although having said that, it must be a year of more since we saw one from somewhere else. Wouldn't want to be telling you to send your Defence to the wrong place. :eek:

Daman1985

Thanks for the details, I'll get the AoS completed and sent off this week, and continue working on the draft defense above (currently needs to extra section "Abuse of Process" and a general spelling and grammar check through).

No-one has expressed any doubts about the case itself.... But the thing that is still making me nervous is the fact i really have no way to argue that the signs are rubbish or that i didn't understand them. I've parked in that car park daily for the last 4 years or so! Can't imagine i will get away with arguing that no contract was formed!

KeithP

Daman1985 wrote: »

I'll get the AoS completed and sent off this week...

Completed and sent off?

I hope you mean completed online - as described in my earlier post?

Daman1985

indeed, I will be doing it online. I just cant do that from work as internet is quite restrictive on my work computer (i'm surprised this forum is accessible!).

I don't foresee any issues with the AoS once im on a home PC though!

Loadsofchildren123

What are the terms of your parking with your employer? eg do you pay for the parking via salary sacrifice? did you automatically get given the permit, or did you have to apply for it? If the latter, to whom did you apply? When you got the permit, did it come with any piece of paper setting out any parking terms or any relationship with the PPC? For the significance of these questions, have a look at my Admiral thread which was an employee car park - in that case, nobody other than Admiral employees used the carpark and the rights to park had been granted to the employee by Admiral, not the PPC, so contractually the PPC couldn't come along afterwards and introduce extra terms.

There is also an argument that the new permit was not fit for purpose because it spontaneously fell off. have any other employees had this problem? Can your HR dept/employer help?

Have you ever handed over your reg number which could/should have been used for a "white list"?

Daman1985

Loadsofchildren123 wrote: »

What are the terms of your parking with your employer? eg do you pay for the parking via salary sacrifice?

My company has offices all over the UK, so whilst not all employees get a permit, every employee based at my office automatically gets given a permit upon joining, and any employee from other offices tends to get one to if they visit often. Irregular Visitors are given paper print out versions to ID them to the parking wardens. There is no salary sacrifice involved and all employees/visitors can use the car park as required.

The parking restrictions are solely to stop members of the public using our car park to visit the nearby shopping centre, there is no restrictions / terms on how we use the car park from my employers point of view.

Loadsofchildren123 wrote: »

did you automatically get given the permit, or did you have to apply for it? If the latter, to whom did you apply?

There is no application process to get one, we just have a stack of them in the office and they are handed out as needed. They are not vehicle specific.

Loadsofchildren123 wrote: »

When you got the permit, did it come with any piece of paper setting out any parking terms or any relationship with the PPC?

There was a bit of paper work attached to the permit, but i don't have it any more (it never occurred to me to keep it at the time), the new style permits are different than the ones in use at the time of the ticket unfortunately.

Loadsofchildren123 wrote: »

There is also an argument that the new permit was not fit for purpose because it spontaneously fell off. have any other employees had this problem

No, no other employees have had this issue that i know of, although some have paid tickets following bringing in partners cars, hire cars etc.
I suspect in my case it detached because I fitted it soon after buying the car, I think there must have been some cleaning agent or what have you on the windscreen that didn’t adhere well to the parking ticket glue. Obviously that gives me nothing I can reference as evidence though

Loadsofchildren123 wrote: »

Can your HR dept/employer help?

Annoyingly the tenancy agreement with the landlord of the building is held by a parent company… who frankly don’t care at all.

Loadsofchildren123 wrote: »

Have you ever handed over your reg number which could/should have been used for a "white list"?

This is the one I intend to rest on the most. My company collects vehicle details and I have always kept business insurance on my car.

So far as I know the parking company does not collect details from my company and they expect us to rely solely on the parking permits. But given their signs say “Pre-authorised vehicles parked wholly within their allocated parking space” I figure that is their failure not mine?

There is also big sign at the entrance showing which colour spaces are for my company (we occupy only one floor of a large building), and the Parking company’s own photographs on the day show I’m in one of my companies spaces… Practically those markings are to stop the various companies knicking each others spaces, but I see no reason that it couldn’t be argued that those markings imply to a driver they don’t need a permit in the marked bays.

Coupon-mad

Your firm really does not need this scam, but I guess you have no voice if it was the landlord who stupidly thought parking enforcement by a scammer who would target all of you, was a big and clever idea instead of a gate or parking posts for employees?

No idea why any companies do this. Stopping commuters or shoppers just takes a gate or posts and a few polite (in house) signs.