Britannia + BW Legal court papers

IloveBritannia

Jeez, I'd thought of myself as a rather intelligent person, but only now I fully understood what you guys meant, that the company which instructed WB Legal had nothing to do with the one which issued the original NTK, so no case here, is that correct?

Apologies for my brevity and the lack of acknowledgments, will be back after 4pm as cannot really do anything from work...

nosferatu1001

Its even worse than that

A DORMANT compa ny is DORMANT. It cannot make contracts. It cannot "instruct" anyone (as that is a contract) and so they have no ability to start a claim.

IloveBritannia

No, actually...

I've just checked all my correspondence from Britannia and every single letter has their reg. no. 08182990, which is for Britannia Parking Group Ltd aka Britannia Parking aka britpark. So it's just a misnomer by Britannia Parking where they signed the "your-account-has-been-passed-to-our-legal-team" letter as Britannia Parking Limited, though they obviously used their own (which means BP aka BPGL) letterhead.
My concern is that the judge will just treat it as a simple irrelevant mistake on the Claimant's part...
HELP please!

IloveBritannia

Coupon-mad wrote: »

Bargepole meant to start with that line, not then repeat the defence at all, it's not needed if you start with that line.

You could even put 'My defence is repeated.' (THEN NOT REPEAT IT, OBVIOUSLY!).

Thanks for pointing that out Coupon-mad, otherwise I might have missed. I changed my WS after being reprimanded by KeithP but left the original bargepole-style para by mistake.

IloveBritannia

Guys, can you just help me here please.

The hearing is scheduled for the 12th July (Friday), so do I have to file by tomorrow 4pm or today? I wasn't given the actual date, just the 14-days-before-the-hearing which can be read either way.
Obviously I don't want to give BWIllegal an extra day, neither do I want to miss the deadline! 1h 12mins???

IloveBritannia

I did call the court office by they weren't very decisive about the deadline either, though they also said that missing by a day shouldn't be a problem.

IloveBritannia

OK, called them again and they confirmed it's definitely by tomorrow 4pm. (A sigh of relief)

IloveBritannia

In the Slough County Court Case number unknown

Britannia Parking Ltd Claimant
Parties:
Someone Defendant


WITNESS STATEMENT
1. I, Someone of Somewhere am the Defendant in this claim. The facts in this statement come from my personal knowledge.
2. Towards the end of November 2017 the Defendant received in the post a Parking Charge Notice (PCN) from Britannia Parking Group Ltd (Registered in England No. 08182990) for allegedly exceeding the maximum stay on the Slough Retail Park car park on the 16th November 2017.
3. Although the Defendant is the registered keeper of the car in question he did not drive it on that day at all. He only uses that car very occasionally as he owns and drives a different one.
4. The PCN contained two digital images of the car (front and back), however on them there was no identifiable landmarks or street furniture identifying its location at the time, neither were any visible time stamps (copy of PCN in appendix 1)
5. Although the Defendant strongly suspected that the PCN was a scam, he decided to visit the location of the alleged contravention.
6. There was no visible parking restriction signage at the approach to the park (photo in appendix 3)
7. Whilst driving slowly looking around the Defendant noticed some signage on the left, however he was unable to absorb any information written on it apart from the white letter P on a blue square. (photo in appendix 4)
8. The Defendant did have to look away from the direction of driving to notice the sign.
9. Driving further on the Defendant did notice a pronounced sign of Range the store (photo in appendix 5)
10. The Defendant entered that store and asked a manager if their customers were reporting getting fined for parking there.
11. The manager replied with some exasperation that there were literally hundreds of cases where customers complained about effectively being penalised for spending their hard earned money at that retail park and that he was very frustrated at being unable to help them.
12. Upon the Defendant’s return home he decided to appeal the parking charge (copy of the appeal in appendix 6)
13. The appeal was subsequently rejected, however the Defendant decided against paying the charge as he thought that it was totally unjustified.
14. The Defendant chose to ignore subsequent demands from Britannia and their alleged debt recovery agents as he considered them fraudulent.
15. Towards the end of August 2018 upon his return from 2 weeks’ summer holiday the Defendant found two letters relating to the PCN, both dated 15th August 2018, one of them from Britannia Parking Limited and the other one from BW Legal.
16. Both letters were to inform the defendant that BW Legal was instructed by Britannia Parking Limited to recover from him the balance due (appendices 7 & 8).

17. The Defendant replied by email on 29th August explaining his point of view (appendix 9).

18. The following day the Defendant received a Letter of Claim from BW Legal dated 28th August which warned him of an impending legal action potentially resulting in a £241.25 court claim unless he has paid the £160 balance by 2nd October 2018 (appendix 10).

19. The Claimant was named as Britannia Parking Limited which is was a different company from the one which issued the original PCN as that was called Britannia Parking Group Ltd.

20. As it was clear that their correspondence criss-crossed each other the Defendant wrote another email on the 7th September in which he advised BW Legal that he would be disregarding their Letter of Claim pending a receipt of further evidence from them (appendix 11).

21. On the 8th September the Defendant received a letter from BW Legal containing copies of his previous correspondence with Britannia Parking and at last pictures of the car with visible time stamps on them. Still there was nothing to link those pictures with the location of the alleged contravention.

22. The Defendant replied to that letter by email on the 21st September, advising BW Legal that their evidence was insufficient for him to accept. An exchange of emails followed where each party got entrenched in their own positions (appendix 12).

23. In late October the Defendant received a notice of a county court claim issued (dated 19th October)

24. Following that notice the Defendant started preparing his defence, in which process several facts came to light:

25. The Companies House records showed the company which issued the Claim as being dormant. That meant that there were unable to pursue their claim in Court (appendix 13).
26. As the Claimant has not issued the original PCN their claim had no legal basis whatsoever.
27. There was no evidence whatsoever that that either Britannia Parking Ltd (the Claimant) or Britannia Parking Group Ltd (the issuer of the PCN) had an authorisation from the Landowner to operate at that location.
28. The Landowner at the time of the alleged contravention was Benson Elliott (appendix 14).
29. BW Legal subsequently provided a copy of an agreement between Britannia Parking Services Limited (company number 8187238) as a Supplier and Care Facilities Management as a Customer permitting the former exclusively administering and collecting fees in respect of parking at the car park in question (appendix 15).
30. Not only there was no evidence therein of any relations between the Landowner and the Care Facilities Management,
31. The Supplier was also a different company to either the one which issued the Claim or the one which issued the PCN.

32. In addition, the Claimant appears to have breached several paragraphs of the British Parking Association’s Code of Practice, which they were obliged to obey being a member:


33. The Paragraph 20.14 states that when serving a Notice to Keeper, they must include information telling the keeper the reasonable cause they had for asking DVLA for their details.
34. No such information was included within the PCN issued to the Defendant (appendix 16).
35. In fact there was no indication therein that the Keeper’s details were requested from DVLA altogether which may indicate a potential breach of the Data Protection Act.
36. This also indicated that the Claimant has failed the POFA 2012 requirements.

37. The Paragraph 13.2 of BCA CoP stipulates that the driver should be allowed a reasonable ‘grace period’ in which to decide if they are going to stay or go. No length of such period is specified, which is confirmed by Kelvin Reynolds, BPA Director of Corporate Affairs in his comments published on the BPA website (appendix 17).
38. The Paragraph 13.4 states that the driver should also be allowed a reasonable period to leave the car park after the parking contract has ended, the minimum length of that period being a minimum of 10 minutes.
39. As the Driver’s alleged overstay amounted to 17 minutes, it should have clearly been considered a reasonable amount of time when both allowable grace periods were added.

40. The signage at the entrance to the retail park seemed to have been designed in such way as not to attract attention from the passing drivers.
41. That would have especially affected regular visitors to the park, whose perception of the new signage would have been diminished by their familiarity with the surroundings.

42. Given the multitude of inaccuracies contained in the Claim the Defendant considers it totally spurious therefore he invites the Judge to strike it out.
43. As the Defendant is having to take time of work in order to attend the hearing, he will be seeking to recover both his travelling expenses and the loss of earnings.
44. The Defendant believes that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.

beamerguy

Surely BWLegal added a fake amount to their claim (ie £60)

If so, you must make the judge aware of this case ...
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6014081/abuse-of-process-district-judge-tells-bwlegal

IloveBritannia

Thanks beamerguy, that is very helpful!