Vcs letter before claim...mistake of calling VCS when receiving NTK...Help!

Suggii

below is the automated reply i got from VCS email. Is this normal when submitting documents? they wrote they will respond in 28days and that they dont accept service documents through email?
can anyone explain this is normal?


Thank you for your email which has been received by the Litigation Team. This email is automatically generated; please do not reply to this message.

Please refrain from submitting unnecessary duplicate correspondence by only using one method of email, post or fax.

Response Time

We will endeavour to process your email within 28 working days.


Please note that we do not accept service of documents by email.

Important Note:

- If a claim has been issued we will not deal with any further appeals. Please direct your defence to the County Court Business Centre [CCBC] or the allocated Court.

- If you have already received a response from us dealing with your initial query, we will not respond to any further correspondence from you. Our letter would have informed you that our decision was final.

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- All documents should be served at the address of 2 Europa Court, Sheffield Business Park, Sheffield, S9 1XE.

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Suggii

I just posted the WS to VCS today, as they dont accept services documents via email. I might just about make the 14 day deadline.

Would it affect the case anyway?

Loadsofchildren123

No. A day or two late will be overlooked, as long as they've had it well before the hearing.
If they complain, just say you didn't realise that they didn't accept service by email since they use email to correspond with you on, and by the time you realised it was too late to get it to them by post on time, but it was only a day [or whatever] late, and x days before the hearing so the very short delay has not caused any prejudice or disadvantage.

Suggii

Thank u loadsofchildren for clearing that up.

Suggii

below is the skellie, i know this forum is constantly busy if anyone can please critique it. i know its long and i dont know how else to condense it. if anyone can help out would be grateful. regards

p.s. im trying to get this and costs schedule posted this Tuesday the latest as hearing is on 8th Oct.

SKELETON ARGUMENT ON BEHALF OF DEFENDANT (NAME)

1.The Defendant asks the court to dismiss the claim due to the below grounds:

A Factual Basis
2.If a contract exists, which is denied, then it was impossible to complete due to a breakdown, making it difficult to leave the car park within the 10minute grace period.

a. In Para 42 of the Claimant’s Witness Statement, a 10 minute grace period is mentioned. However, the maximum time allowed in the car park is left blank in the Notice to Keeper (Exhibit SA2), the 10 minute grace period is not applied to the time the vehicle had been on site.
b.The signage at the site is in the name of Excel Parking LTD, only one sign in the claimants CT1 tariff board mentions VCS in small print, when the remaining are Excel Parking. If a contract existed it would have been with Excel and not the claimant.

3. In any case, the time taken in coping with some vicissitude of short duration, such as a breakdown is unreasonable to bring a claim for.

Lack of Contract

4. It is for the claimant to prove that a contract had been entered into.

Claimants Witness Statement.
5. Claimant's witness statement is from a Paralegal, Charlotte Trayers, representing the Claimant, has been employed by the company since July 2019. As the alleged contravention took place in February 2018, none of the statements provided in her witness statement can be of her own knowledge. She is not aware of the alleged offence, the location, the signage or the facts in this case.
6. Furthermore, this is proven in the Claimants witness statement Paragraph 50 that refers to the parking overstay of 30 minutes, when the PCN notice to keeper, it mentions the duration of stay is 29minutes.

.
7. The Claimant wishes to rely on Thornton vs Shoe Lane Parking [1971] 2 QB 163 to attempt to try and prove individuals may enter into contracts with a sign. That case is fully distinguished from this case in question as that relates to a car park with a barrier on entry. The sign is clearly visible to motorists entering the car park and they are able to read the sign and decide whether they want to enter the car park while they take a ticket and wait for the barrier to open. In this case, there is no barrier. The case above has no relevance on this case.


8. In Paragraph 35 of the Claimants witness statement, the Claimant refers to ‘Vine v Waltham Forest’. The Court of Appeal on this case ruled in favour of the Defendant on the basis that a person cannot be presumed bound by terms and conditions on signage that they haven’t seen. It would appear that the Claimant is attempting to wrongfully persuade the court by mis-quoting Roch L.J. The full quote is this;

“the question whether a person voluntarily assumes a risk or consents to trespass to his or her property is to be judged objectively and not subjectively. Once it is established that sufficient and adequate warning notices were in place, a car driver cannot be heard to say that he or she did not see the notice. Were that to be the law, it would be too easy for car drivers who trespass with their cars to evade the only method landowners have of stopping the unauthorised parking of cars in parking spaces or parking areas on their property.”


9. As you can see, Lord Justice Roch was simply reading one side of the argument. Roch L.J. found in favour of the motorist in this case. Therefore, this case can be immediately dismissed as it has no bearing on this case in question. In ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67, the sign is much clearer and found to be sufficient.


10. Paragraph 36 states the Claimant is intending to rely on the ParkingEye v Beavis case. This case can be fully distinguished from my case due to the following facts;

a. There was neither contractual offer made giving a licence to park nor any promise made, or contract agreed based on any prominent signs or properly marked lines.
b. There is no comparable legitimate interest or commercial justification for charging more than the landowner could claim by way of restitutionary damages.
c. The Beavis case was a free car park.

d. The Beavis case, which was dependent upon Mr Beavis being the driver who accepted a clear contract, formed by unusually prominent signage. Strict compliance with the BPA Code of Practice and the clear, prominent terms on brief signs was held to be paramount. None of this applies in this material case. Exhibit XX the Beavis case sign, next to an Excel sign.
f. The sign at the entrance to the car park is impossible to read while driving. When compared to the sign in ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67. The claimants sign is too wordy, with too much information crammed into text boxes. The £100 fine is hidden with PCN in larger letters, overpowering the actual fine amount, it is not as clear as the Beavis £85 fine.

11. Further and in the alternative, it is denied that the claimant's signage sets out the terms in a sufficiently clear manner which would be capable of binding any reasonable person reading them. The Department for Transport "Know Your Traffic Signs" publication states that "drivers may stop to pick up or set down passengers" (Exhibit in skellie) where waiting restrictions are in force, yet the Claimant avers that the Defendant is in breach of the advertised terms and conditions; namely stopping in a zone where stopping is prohibited - this is not the case, the claimant has not provided proof of the “No Waiting/stopping" signs that had been breached. In addition, there are no markings on the carriageway to indicate that restrictions are in force, eg. yellow or red lines.

12. The terms on the Claimant's signage are also displayed in a font which is too small to be read from a passing vehicle, is in such a position that anyone attempting to read the tiny font would be unable to do so easily. It is, therefore, denied that the Claimant's signage is capable of creating a legally binding contract.
13.There has been no "grace period" applied to allow the Defendant to read the Claimant's signage. For these reasons, the case of VCS v Ward, on appeal in the County Court before His Honour Judge Saffman, should not have a bearing in this instance. This is because with respect to VCS v Ward, HHJ Saffman accepted that the signage (being the entrance and 66 repeater signs) represented an offer of a contractual licence, which was accepted when the user drove onto the private land. In this instance, the text is too small to alert the user to the fact that they are entering private land, and is therefore, not capable of creating a legally binding contract.
a. Furthermore the VCS v Ward case can be distinguished as the defendant failed to attend the appeal hearing, resulting in the case leaning in favour of the claimant.
14.The defendant can only rely on an images from Google Maps of the entrance sign that was in the name of Excel, and does not mention anything regarding the stopping of vehicles. From the defendants witness statement exhibit XX, although it is a picture in daylight, you can see the sign is behind a gate and driving, around 5pm in the evening, meant visibility will be less, and the driver would have to stop to read the sign. Which from the claimants bundle CT1 of entrance sign, it doesn’t mention any terms or conditions, and rather they are inside the car park, which have to be read by getting outside of the vehicle. The driver cannot agree to a contract that the terms have not been read inside the car park.
15. The visibility at the time is further proven from the claimants Exhibit CT2 that shows the ANPR images of the vehicle in transit, the visibility of the images is poor as it was 5pm in the evening, you can only just make out the VRN, and headlights of the car. This only proves further as it would have been difficult to see signage in poor lighting, whilst driving.
16. In CT1 of the claimant’s signs, there is only one main tariff board with the terms and conditions that name VCS in small print, which is unreadable and can only form a contract by getting out of the vehicle and reading them, which would mean you have to stop. The defendant didn’t have any time to read any terms as there was no intention to use the car park for parking, however, the defendant wanted to sort out the mechanical fault so that he can move the car out of the car park.
a. The rest of signage in the Claimants CT1 all mention Excel Parking LTD manage and control the car park, including the entrance sign, there is no mention of VCS, unless you are making payment and read the Tariff board. This is misleading information for drivers entering the car park.
b.Consumer Rights Act 2015 requires that information given is unambiguous; the signs mention Excel in bold and only one says VCS in small print. An average consumer is therefore expecting to form any contract with Excel and no one else.

c. The Claimant’s Evidence CT1 shows a number of pictures of signage around the car park. None of these pictures are legible, as they are taken a year before the alleged contravention. The claimant is presenting a false representation of the car park at the time.
d. The sign artwork provided by the claimant in CT1, there are two sign boards that have contradictory wording to each other and questions to whether they are false evidence to what the actual sign on site may have been. The large sign with tariffs mentions in small font about the £100 fine “discounted to £60 if payment is received within 14 days of the PCN”. However, the info board 660 x 1252mm, Design 2 mentions about £100 fine “discounted to £40 if payment is received within 14 days of the notice issue date”, where there is no mention of VCS.

e. The design of the large tariff sign with terms is intentionally hard to read making the less important parts larger than they need to be and making text smaller in favour of unused space. A driver can only read that on foot.


Procedural Basis

17. The claim made via Money Claims Online (MCOL) is broad and unspecific. It does not utilise the 1080 character limit. MCOL explicitly allows claimants to submit further particulars outside the platform.

18. The Charge Notice (Claimant’s Evidence CT2, Defendant’s Evidence SA2) clearly states the value of £100. There is no explanation in the particulars for the additional £60.

a. These sums have been held to be unrecoverable (ParkingEye v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67). It is an abuse of process for the Claimant to issue knowingly inflated claims. The Claimant should know their claim is inflated due to their case history.
Abuse of process
19. Costs on the claim - disproportionate and disingenuous
- CPR 44.3 (2) states: ''Where the amount of costs is to be assessed on the standard basis, the court will –
(a) only allow costs which are proportionate to the matters in issue. Costs which are disproportionate in amount may be disallowed or reduced even if they were reasonably or necessarily incurred; and
(b) resolve any doubt which it may have as to whether costs were reasonably and proportionately incurred or were reasonable and proportionate in amount in favour of the paying party.

20. Whilst quantified costs can be considered on a standard basis, this Claimant's purported costs are wholly disproportionate and do not stand up to scrutiny. In fact it is averred that the Claimant has not paid or incurred such damages/costs or 'legal fees' at all. Any debt collection letters were a standard feature of a low cost business model and are already counted within the parking charge itself.
21. Further to support the above point, the Debt Recovery Plus (DRP) website, states that they work on a ‘no collection, no fee basis’. Therefore there was no £60 paid, as the amount was not collected, and is basically an extra add on the original £100. Exhibit XX

22. The Parking Eye Ltd v Beavis case is the authority for recovery of the parking charge itself and no more, since that sum (£85 in Beavis) was held to already incorporate the minor costs of an automated private parking business model. There are no losses or damages caused by this business model and the Supreme Court Judges held that a parking firm not in possession cannot plead any part of their case in damages. It is indisputable that the alleged 'parking charge' itself is a sum which the Supreme Court found is already inflated to more than comfortably cover the cost of all letters.

23. Any purported 'legal costs' are also made up out of thin air. Given the fact that robo-claim solicitors and parking firms process tens of thousands of claims handled by an admin team or paralegals, the Defendant avers that no solicitor is likely to have supervised this current batch of cut & paste claims. The court is invited to note that no named Solicitor has signed the Particulars, in breach of Practice Direction 22, and rendering the statement of truth a nullity.

24.The Claimant is a serial offender on this regard and must be well aware that CPR 27.14 does not permit such charges to be recovered in the Small Claims track. According to Ladak v DRC LocumsUKEAT/0488/13/LA the Claimant can only recover the direct and provable costs of the time spent on preparing the claim in a legal capacity, not any administration cost allegedly incurred by already remunerated administrative staff.

25. Furthermore, and addition to the point above, the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4 (POFA) makes it clear that the will of Parliament regarding parking on private land is that the only sum potentially able to be recovered is the sum in any compliant 'Notice to Keeper' (and the ceiling for a 'parking charge', as set by the Trade Bodies and the DVLA, is £100). This also depends upon the Claimant fully complying with the statute, including 'adequate notice' of the parking charge and prescribed documents served in time/with mandatory wording. It is submitted the claimant has failed on all counts and the Claimant is well aware their artificially inflated claim, as pleaded, constitutes double recovery.

26. Judges have disallowed all added parking firm 'costs' in County courts up and down the Country. In Claim number F0DP201T on 10th June 2019, District Judge Taylor sitting at the County Court at Southampton, echoed an earlier General Judgment or Order of DJ Grand, who on 21st February 2019 sitting at the Newport (IOW) County Court, had struck out a parking firm claim. One was a BPA member serial Claimant (Britannia, using BW Legal's robo-claim model) and one an IPC member serial Claimant (UKCPM, using Gladstones' robo-claim model) yet the Order was identical in striking out both claims without a hearing (Exhibit XX):

''It is ordered that the claim is struck out as an abuse of process. The claim contains a substantial charge additional to the parking charge which it is alleged the Defendant contracted to pay. This additional charge is not recoverable under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4 nor with reference to the judgment in ParkingEye v Beavis. It is an abuse of process from the Claimant to issue a knowingly inflated claim for an additional sum which it is not entitled to recover. This order has been made by the court of its own initiative without a hearing pursuant to CPR Rule 3.3(4) of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998...''
27.That is not an isolated judgment striking a parking claim out for repeatedly adding sums they are not entitled to recover. In the Caernarfon Court in Case number FTQZ4W28 (Vehicle Control Services Ltd v Davies) on 4th September 2019, District Judge Jones-Evans stated:

''Upon it being recorded that District Judge Jones-Evans has over a very significant period of time warned advocates [...] in many cases of this nature before this court that their claim for £60 is unenforceable in law and is an abuse of process and is nothing more than a poor attempt to go behind the decision of the Supreme Court v Beavis which inter alia decided that a figure of £160 as a global sum claimed in this case would be a penalty and not a genuine pre-estimate of loss and therefore unenforceable in law and if the practice continued he would treat all cases as a claim for £160 and therefore a penalty and unenforceable in law it is hereby declared [...] the claim is struck out and declared to be wholly without merit and an abuse of process.'' Exhibit XX


28. The Claimant’s Witness Statement is inconsistent. Para 36 and 37 contradicts the facts on liability, when the defendant had called the claimant regarding the Notice to Keeper and accepted they were the driver. Therefore, there use of Schedule 4 Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 is not relevant in the keeper liability matter when the driver is known.

29. The claimant fails to distinguish whether the defendant’s vehicle was parked or stopped.
30. Although the case is not similar to the defendants, In Jopson v Homeguard Services Ltd 9GF0A9E (Exhibit XX in skellie) his Honour Judge Harris QC found that:
“The purported prohibition was upon “parking”, and it is possible to draw a real and sensible distinction between pausing for a few moments or minutes to enable passengers to alight or for awkward or heavy items to be unloaded, and parking in the sense of leaving a car for some significant duration of time. The concept of parking, as opposed to stopping, is that of leaving a car for some duration of time beyond that needed for getting in or out of it, loading or unloading it, and perhaps coping with some vicissitude of short duration, such as changing a wheel in the event of a puncture. Whether a car is parked, or simply stopped, or left for a moment while unloading, or (to take an example discussed in argument) accompanying a frail person inside, must be a question of fact or degree”
With reliance to the above quote the defendant was coping with some vicissitude of short duration, due to the breakdown of the vehicle.
31. In the Claimants bundle CT1 the site map does not mention any ‘no stopping’, or ‘no waiting signs’. There is no mention in the claimant’s evidence of any warning sign that was breached.
32.The claimant at Paragraph 52 cites Vehicle Control Services Limited V Alfred Charles Crutchley (2017), which can be dismissed as it was a case based on “stopping on a roadway where stopping is prohibited”. There is no relevance to this case.
33. The claimant is intending to rely on Chaplair v Kumari to attempt to justify an unknown £60 “debt recovery charge”. This case is distinguished from the case above by the following facts; the Beavis case established that a parking firm cannot seek or plead a sum in 'damages'. Chaplair v Kumari is also distinguished. Far from supporting this attempt at double recovery, Chaplair was a decision about contractual fees set in lease terms, whereas parking charges are capped by the POFA/the will of Parliament at the sum on any Notice to Keeper, and not higher, and the Beavis case confirmed this by only allowing £85 and no bolt on 'damages' or imaginary debt collector costs.
34. The claimant also relies on Davies Contractors V Fareham Urban DC (1956) A.C.696. This case can be distinguished as there was no agreed contract, as the defendant was caught up in trying to fix the breakdown problem with the vehicle, rather than reading the tariff board and agreeing to a contract before the breakdown.
a. However, years of precedent regarding the legal principle of frustration, shows this case was an aberration.
b. The claimant refers in paragraph 71, that the defendant was not prevented from fulfilling his contractual obligations i.e. to make a payment. However, this would have still been impossible as going over the 10 minute grace period already there would have been a breach and making a new payment would mean forming a new contract, which is out with the concept of frustration and outside of what the case above reveals.

35. In summary, the Claimant's particulars disclose no legal basis for the sum claimed and it is the Defendant's position that the poorly pleaded claim discloses no cause of action and no liability in law for any sum at all. The Claimant's vexatious conduct from the outset has been intimidating, misleading and indeed mendacious in terms of the added costs alleged.

36. The Court is invited to make an Order of its own initiative, dismissing this claim in its entirety and to allow such Defendant's costs as are permissible under Civil Procedure Rule 27.14 on the indemnity basis, taking judicial note of the wholly unreasonable conduct of this Claimant, not least due to the abuse of process in repeatedly attempting to claim fanciful costs which they are not entitled to recover.

I believe that the facts stated in this skeleton argument are true.

Suggii

does this costs schedule below seem reasonable. (especially the unreasonable behavior - would all that count as unreasonable behavior?)

Schedule of costs

Research and preparation of defence as litigant in person @£19 per hour,
5 hours. Total £95.

Unreasonable behaviour Estimate £50;
• Informing the defendant that CCJ has been awarded when it wasn’t.
• Not replying to any SAR request letters until 3 months later via email forwarded by Excel.
• DRP harassing defendant, in the form of postal letters, phone calls and text messages.

Printing of 3 copies of witness statement and skeleton argument and postage
Estimate £35.

One day off work to attend hearing on xx/xx/xxxx @£9.50 per hour X 12 hours
£114

Mileage driven to attend court and return on xx/xx/xxxx
11 miles @ £0.45 per mile
£4.95

Car parking on day of hearing on xx/xx/xxxx
£1.90

Total costs claimed £300.85

Suggii

Can anyone please advise if the Skellie above is good to go. I am planning to send it off tomorrow, so a feedback would be really helpful.
.regards.

U414830

Loss of earnings will be capped at £95.

Umkomaas

U414830 wrote: »

Loss of earnings will be capped at £95.

And you must take wage slips to prove your level of earnings.

In terms of your Skeleton Argument. If you're lucky and given 5 minutes to make your case how are you going to condense a 3,500+ word tome into an intelligent, sharply focused argument?

Are your most potent arguments at the top of the SA list, because if they're nearer the bottom, you're never going to get there?

How much of your SA a mere repeat of chunks of your Defence/Witness Statement? If so can you not just cross reference, rather than a copy and paste of lengthy verbiage?

All the legal cases you have quoted (especially if you've also done so in your Defence and WS), are you au fait with their contents, their context, and how they impinge on your case, and aid your defence?

nosferatu1001

You've fundamentally misunderstood costs suggi

You have ORDINARY COSTS
This is capped at £95 for time off work and a HALF DAYS pay, so not 12 hours. Tough but thats the rules

UNREASONABLE COSTS
This is your time spent to write and researdch your defence, gather evidence, write your WS, write the skellie, etc. You must break it down this way. More chance to get your costs.