Letter before claim - Gladstones Solicitors

egioras

Good afternoon,

I have made some research and have read a few topics but it seems that I may be caught with some smart greedy !!!!!!!s.

Long story short, I work near Mecca Bingo in Oldham and I park on a land near the main car park. The main car park has CCTV which photographs number plates and sends fines to RK. The car park is overlooked by Minster Baywatch LTD.

I parked nearby with no camera coverage. There were signs not to park there unless you have a valid permit from Mecca Bingo to park there.

I don't.

A couple of months ago I received a letter with photographs of my empty, parked vehicle (date and time included). You can see a parking sign from a distance in photographs. They were asking to pay a reduced fine of £60.

I sent a reply on email:

Dear Sir/Ma’am,

Re PCN number:
I appeal and dispute your 'parking charge', as the keeper of the vehicle. I deny any liability.

There will be no admissions as to who was driving and no assumptions can be drawn, nor was there an agreed contract. Your signage terms fail the test of 'large lettering' and prominence of the parking charge, as established in ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis, which is fully distinguished.

Should you fail to cancel this PCN, I require with your rejection letter, all images taken of this vehicle & the signs at the location that day. Do not withhold any images or data later relied on for POPLA/court.

Firms of your ilk were unanimously condemned in 2018 as operating an 'outrageous scam' (Hansard 2.2.18). The BPA & IPC were heavily criticised too; hardly surprising for an industry where so-called AOS members admit to letting victims 'futilely go through the motions' of appeal and say on camera 'we make it up sometimes' (BBC Watchdog).

I will be making a formal complaint about your predatory conduct to your client landowner, as well as complaining in writing to my MP and ensuring that they are appraised of the debate where Parliament agreed unanimously: ''we need to crack down on these rogue companies. They are an absolute disgrace to this country. Ordinary motorists...should not have to put up with this''.

Formal note:

Service of any rejection letter/POPLA code and/or legal documents by email is expressly disallowed. All responses to me from this point on, must be made by post. Regardless of any MCOL online/email system, service of any court claim must only be made by first class post to the latest address provided by me.

Yours faithfully

They then sent me another letter asking to pay a full £100 fine and £55 for debt recovery charges. This was exactly the same letter as before with the same pictures.

I ignored it then today their solicitors sent me a letter before claim asking me to pay £160.

What would be the next step?

I am going to go to Mecca Bingo and ask for a manager to get his permission to remove the fine but I believe one of my colleagues tried it and the manager said it is out of his control.

Another thing is to try pick on their Letter Before Claim and find any issues which do not comply with the The Practice Direction on Pre-action Conduct requirements.

I do not have a defence as such I can only say I went there to try sign for a membership of Mecca Bingo and when I left I found a parking ticket. There are no parking machines to pay for parking as it is for permit holders only.

Looking forward to your opinions guys.

Redx

remove any hint of who was driving and the pcn reference from the above post


then see post #2 of the NEWBIES FAQ sticky thread about composing an LBC rebuttal


also see other recent MB threads about the same issues at the same car park

Coupon-mad

I do not have a defence

Yes you do, everyone does against these scams, and saying 'no parking' for no permit holders mean they have offered no parking licence to the driver, so no contract existed.

If you appealed in time, after the very first letter, did you not receive a POPLA code and a rejection letter or emailed version, with a POPLA code? You should have been offered it.

egioras

I sent them an email and I have not received anything back confirming my appeal they only sent a further letter demanding full amount of £100.

I will have a look at post #2. Should i send a reply to their solicitors from now on?

Thanks for your help

egioras

I did not appeal through POPLA i sent email directly to minsterbaywatch

KeithP

Please re-read the first line of the first reply you received.

egioras

Hi guys I have drafted an email I am going to send to those greedy scavengers.

If anyone has time can you read it and let me know if there is anything I should include, exclude?

Dear Sirs,

Thank you for your letter of ‘LETTER BEFORE CLAIM’ sent on 11th SEPTEMBER 2018.

However, your letter contains insufficient detail of the claim and, again, It does not contain any mention of what evidence you intend to rely on, or enclose copies of such evidence. It does not also detail of how the calculation of a £160 debt has been reached. It does not contain evidence of a contractual agreement between the landowner and the claimant.
In your first letter you have stated that the driver of the vehicle at the time has breached the following stated terms and conditions:

E – A valid Pay and Display ticket was not clearly on display
There is no facility to obtain pay and display ticket there is not a single pay and display machine in the area

K – Vehicle was not authorised to park in this area

Your client MinsterBaywatch LTD oversees parking area on behalf of Mecca Bingo. Duiring the time that the alleged contravention occurred Mecca Bingo was not open for business. The time of contravention that you claim occurred at 10:43am on FRIDAY 13th JULY 2018. Mecca Bingo opens at 11:00am as stated on its website which you can access yourself on xxx. Therefore there was no loss for Mecca Bingo as the contravention has occurred before its normal business hours and at this time no Mecca Bingo customers would be inconvenieced. You have not stated in your letters for how long the vehicle was parked for hence you have no way of providing accurate calculations of your loss.
You have failed to reply to my email sent to xxx on SUNDAY 22nd JULY 2018 so instead you sent me another automated letter on 17th AUGUST 2018 titled “DEMAND FOR PAYMENT OF UNPAID CHARGE”. In this letter you have explained that the alleged charge was passed onto debt recovery team and a further £55 charge has been incurred on top of £100 charge.

On TUESDAY 11th SEPTEMBER 2018 your debt collection team sent me another automated letter demanding £160. The letter came with GLADSTONES solicitors heading but clearly this is a debt recovery team using a legal company’s heading. Again the letter does not explain what facts your client is going to use, nors does it contain summary or explanation of how a £160 debt has been calculated. There is no explanation of how the loss has been incurred when the Mecca Bingo was not even open for business.

This action on the part of your client is a clear breach of its pre-action obligations set out in the Practice Direction - Pre-Action Conduct, with which as solicitors you must surely be familiar (and with which your client, a serial litigator of small claims, must also be familiar). As you (and your client) must know, the Practice Direction binds all potential litigants, whatever the size or type of the claim. Its express purpose is to assist parties in understanding the claim and their respective positions in relation to it, to enable parties to take stock of their positions and to negotiate a settlement, or at least narrow the issues, without incurring the costs of court proceedings or using up valuable court time.

Nobody, including your client, is immune from the requirements and obligations of the Practice Direction. Your client cannot simply refuse to provide the relevant information.

I require your client to comply with its obligations by sending me the following information/documents:

1. an explanation of the cause of action
2. whether they are pursuing me as driver or keeper
3. whether they are relying on the provisions of Schedule 4 of POFA 2012
4. what the details of the claim are (where it is claimed the car was parked, for how long, how the monies being claimed arose and have been calculated, what contractual breach (if any) is being claimed)
5. a copy of the contract with the landowner under which they assert authority to bring the claim
6. a copy of any alleged contract with the driver
7. a plan showing where any signs were displayed
8. details of the signs displayed (size of sign, size of font, height at which displayed)
9. If they have added anything on to the original charge, what that represents and how it has been calculated.

I am clearly entitled to this information under paragraphs 6(a) and 6(c) of the Practice Direction. I also need it in order to comply with my own obligations under paragraph 6(b).

If your client does not provide me with this information then I put you on notice that I will be relying on the cases of Webb Resolutions Ltd v Waller Needham & Green [2012] EWHC 3529 (Ch), Daejan Investments Limited v The Park West Club Limited (Part 20) – Buxton Associates [2003] EWHC 2872, Charles Church Developments Ltd v Stent Foundations Limited & Peter Dann Limited [2007] EWHC 855 in asking the court to impose sanctions on your client and to order a stay of the proceedings, pursuant to paragraphs 13 ,15(b) and (c) and 16. I will draw to the court the fact that I have expressly requested this information since as early as [date or month/year of first request] yet your client has refused to provide it, saying that it will not do so until this matter reaches the court.

Until your client has complied with its obligations and provided this information, I am unable to respond properly to the alleged claim and to consider my position in relation to it, and it is entirely premature (and a waste of costs and court time) for your client to issue proceedings. Should your client do so, then I will seek an immediate stay pursuant to paragraph 15(b) of the Practice Direction and an order that this information is provided.

Yours faithfully,

KeithP

You would be wise to remove your name from the bottom of your most recent post.

The_Deep

This is an entirely unregulated industry which is scamming the public with inflated claims for minor breaches of contracts for alleged parking offences, aided and abetted by a handful of low-rent solicitors.

Parking Eye, CPM, Smart, and another company have already been named and shamed, as has Gladstones Solicitors, and BW Legal, (these two law firms take hundreds of these cases to court each year). They lose most of them, and have been reported to the regulatory authority by an M.P. for unprofessional conduct

Hospital car parks and residential complex tickets have been especially mentioned.

The problem has become so rampant that MPs have agreed to enact a Bill to regulate these scammers. Watch the video of the Second Reading in the House of Commons recently

http://parliamentlive.tv/event/index/2f0384f2-eba5-4fff-ab07-cf24b6a22918?in=12:49:41 recently.

and complain in the most robust terms to your MP. With a fair wind they will be out of business by Christmas.

onlyfoolsandparking

IMO you'll be lucky to get any response, they never seem to bother answering as I have found many times.

Coupon-mad

egioras wrote: »

I did not appeal through POPLA i sent email directly to minsterbaywatch

So you ignored the POPLA option when they rejected your appeal?

Or, did they never send a rejection email/letter? If not, and you appealed within the 28 days, then complain to the BPA about MB not answering an appeal and not giving you a POPLA code:

aos@britishparking.co.uk

Do that first, unless you did get a rejection letter with a POPLA code but ignored it. The letter would have asked for £100, but WOULD have also offered POPLA, did you get that?