URGENT fighting County Court Claim for PCN

adambuzz14

IamEmanresu wrote: »

If you google the location, there appears to be a well signposted Pay & Display. Do you want to check it out a compare it to the pics they have of it. It may be you parked after Excel took it over but before they tarmaced it.

Alternatively there is a staff car park a few metres along the road with VCS signs in them. Pics from Google would be useful to illustrate the point about lack of illumination.

Which car park was it and it will come down to the pics and how a judge will interpret them.

Yeah its not the pay and display car park, its the one a little further up which you refer to as a staff car park. and i have actual pictures of the car park, at night showing how poorly lit it is. but is this my defence, that its poorly lit?

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.

Coupon-mad

but is this my defence, that its poorly lit?

Why the ''but''? That's a major point of defence because the signs communicate the 'contract' and if the signs and PDT machines are hidden and unlit, and thus impossible to see or read in darkness, then there was no agreement on the scam parking charge.

The photo evidence gets submitted later, not at defence stage.

I have been online and done the acknowledgement of service, but haven't submitted any sort of defense.

Defence!

Start by reading the examples in the NEWBIES thread second post.

There is a VCS one there I wrote, about VCS' windscreen 'sticker' that wasn't a parking charge notice. Use that one as your base and edit the facts to suit your case about the lack of lighting/impossibility of seeing terms or PDT machines in the dark.

The_Deep

Demanding that people go on line to view a PCN surely means that the PCN has not properly been issued. Not everyone, (I believe the figure is c@ 10% of the population), has a computer.

System

Yeah its not the pay and display car park, its the one a little further up which you refer to as a staff car park. and i have actual pictures of the car park, at night showing how poorly lit it is. but is this my defence, that its poorly lit?

What you can do is to compare/contrast the entrance signs between the two car parks as they are managed by the same company. VCS is a subsidiary of Excel. You pose the question as to why there is clear signage on one and not the other. It will helpfully illustrate the point you are want to make which is the lack of clarity on the VCS site.

On the day though, a judge may just wonder if you are in the habit of parking up on other people's land without invite and decide they are having none of it. If this is Nottingham court you may not even get a chance at a hearing. See case #2 in my signature.

adambuzz14

Sorry for the slow replies. I've been mad busy working all over the country these past couple of weeks, reading as much info and gaining as much evidence as i can from various travel lodges at night. I didn't want to come on here without having the time to reply properly.

When i say 'But is this my defence', I'm not asking any body to come up with my defence for me, i'm more curious as to out of all the circumstances, which is the the best line to go down. I dont want to dilute the defence too much by covering to much, when maybe there was one overriding point that will easily win the case.

I see i read a lot of posts and draft defence on here stating there has never been any proof that the vehicle owner was the driver at the time, but then go on in their defence to argue that there was poor signage in the car park. Is it just me, but surely that is counter productive? for if you are stating they have not proven who was driving, why would you need to argue any further? doesn't it then kind of go against yourself, and actually prove you were driving if you start arguing other factors?

I'd also like to know how far the exceptional circumstances have to be with these PCN's and the validity of them. I feel i do have exceptional circumstances to win this, but out of curiosity i'm wondering where the 'line' is. For example in the sticky they talk about how these things can be beaten 99% of the time which makes me think do you really have to prove circumstances were against you and you were wronged to received it, or can literally any body get away with one without any real excuse? because if they can be beaten 99% of the time, surely there cant be much substance to them? And if that is the case, is there an argument based on the 'wild west' nature of these things that trump out any argument about signage, times on site, contracts with land owners etc?

Its not a route i'm looking at going down, but i also had an interesting conversion with a guy who questions the whole legality of the county court bulk center, stating they aren't a real court, have no judges, no legal experts, no legal jurisdiction to issue defaults, and they are, in truth, in on the whole PCN, TV licence, Credit card etc court case scam themselves. Like i say, its not a route i am looking at going down, just curious on others thoughts on this.

So the main points of my defence:

No evidence or proof car was on land in question
No evidence who the driver of the vehicle was
Didn't enter into any contract with VCS
No lighting in car park
Very little signage, not lit or visible in dark
Window Sticker on vehicle stating we would have to go online to check what had been committed (cant remember if it was a 'this is not a pcn sticker'', but i think it was )
No letter before claim from VCS
Particulars of claim quite vague
unknown link between VCS and land owner
Why isn't the land owner taking me to court?

I'm also wanting some clarification about the whole 'this is not a pcn' situation? and the link between the time scales of issuing NTK and PCN?

Thanks again

Le_Kirk

I see i read a lot of posts and draft defence on here stating there has never been any proof that the vehicle owner was the driver at the time, but then go on in their defence to argue that there was poor signage in the car park. Is it just me, but surely that is counter productive?

You, as keeper, might have been a passenger in the car at the time of the event OR you, as keeper, might have visited the site later and taken some photos!

also had an interesting conversion with a guy who questions the whole legality of the county court bulk [STRIKE]center[/STRIKE] centre, stating they aren't a real court, have no judges, no legal experts, no legal jurisdiction to issue defaults

When you get a judgement against you, maybe your guy can pay your costs! The Northampton business centre does not purport to be a court, it is a processing centre, all the court business is done at each defendant's local court.

adambuzz14

Le_Kirk wrote: »

You, as keeper, might have been a passenger in the car at the time of the event OR you, as keeper, might have visited the site later and taken some photos!


When you get a judgement against you, maybe your guy can pay your costs! The Northampton business center does not purport to be a court, it is a processing centre, all the court business is done at each defendant's local court.

But how you you defend a case as a passenger and vehicle owner? i'm sure a judge would see straight through that one.

And he's not 'my guy', and i said in my last post it isn't a route i'm looking at going down. I was merely asking if others had come across this. More from the point of view that somebody at the bulk center can read your defence who isn't a judge, isn't legally trained and can reject it without it even passing by a judge...

Redx

the people at the Business Centre will have judges who can login and make a decision from remote locations, like the CPS may do in legal cases on behalf of various police forces

the staff at that CCBC are civil service office staff and although they may read what has been written, it is not their decision to make a judgment because they are not legally trained nor have the qualifications that a barrister or a judge has

just assume that they do not make the decisions, they just do the red tape and a decision of a defence will be made by a procedural judge somewhere, who decides if the case should go forward , be stayed, or be struck out


https://www.mylawyer.co.uk/the-defendant-disputes-all-or-part-of-my-claim-a-A76076D76668/



the actual court in Northampton is a completely different address !

KeithP

adambuzz14 wrote: »

But how you you defend a case as a passenger and vehicle owner? i'm sure a judge would see straight through that one.

I don't understand why?
My wife and I often travel together in the same car. Obviously only one of us will be driving and equally obviously only one of us is the Registered Keeper - who happens to be the owner. Either one of us will be driving depending on the particular circumstance.