Britannia + BW Legal court papers

IloveBritannia

Many thanks for that beamerguy, that is soooo helpful and already added to my WS!

IloveBritannia

Why do I have to post things twice...???:mad:

Le_Kirk

30. Not only there was no evidence therein of any relations between the Landowner and the Care Facilities Management,

Is there something missing here? It just stops. With a sentence beginning, "not only" you would expect a "but also."

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 [strike]a minimum of[/strike] 10 minutes.

With your point 39, it is usually advised to show the grace periods separately, that way you can show reasons why it took longer to a) read signs and decide because, for example, they were difficult to find and/or see being small font and b) took a long time to leave due to other traffic leading to congestion etc.

Umkomaas

IloveBritannia wrote: »

Why do I have to post things twice...???:mad:

New York, New York!

IloveBritannia

Le_Kirk wrote: »

Is there something missing here? It just stops. With a sentence beginning, "not only" you would expect a "but also."

It follows on in the next paragraph, bu I have now changed it to make it clearer.
I have read it three times without noticing the double minimum, thanks for that!

With your point 39, it is usually advised to show the grace periods separately, that way you can show reasons why it took longer to a) read signs and decide because, for example, they were difficult to find and/or see being small font and b) took a long time to leave due to other traffic leading to congestion etc.

I thought I did it in the paragraphs 37 and 38, but have now added the pre-Xmas congestion

IloveBritannia

1. I, xxxxxxxxxxxx, 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, neither were any visible time stamps (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 (appendix 2).
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 (appendix 3).
8. The Defendant did have to look away from the direction of driving in order to notice the sign.
9. Driving further on the Defendant did notice a pronounced sign of the Range store (appendix 4).
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 an exasperation that there were literally hundreds of instances where customers complained to him about effectively being penalised for spending their hard earned money at his store and that he was very frustrated at being unable to help them to get the charges cancelled.
12. On the Defendant’s return home he decided to appeal the parking charge (appendix 5).
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 6 & 7).
17. The Defendant replied by email on 29th August explaining his point of view (appendix 8).
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 9).
19. The Claimant was named as Britannia Parking Limited which was a different company from the one which issued the original PCN, as that one 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 10).
21. On the 8th September the Defendant received a letter from BW Legal containing copies of his previous correspondence with Britannia Parking Group Ltd and also pictures of the car with visible time stamps on them, which had not been disclosed to him previously. Still there was nothing to link the 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 11).
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 that the company which issued the Claim (Britannia Parking Ltd) was dormant. That meant that there were unable to pursue any claims in Court (appendix 12).
26. As the Claimant was not the issuer of the original PCN, their claim had no legal basis.
27. There was no evidence whatsoever 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 the location in question.
28. The Landowner at the time of the alleged contravention was Benson Elliott (appendix 13).
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 to exclusively administer and collect fees in respect of parking at the car park in question (appendix 14).
30. Not only there was no evidence therein of any relations between the Landowner and the Care Facilities Management,
31. But also the Supplier was a different company to both the one which issued the Claim and 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 1).
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 has been confirmed by Kelvin Reynolds, BPA Director of Corporate Affairs in his comments published on the BPA website (appendix 15).
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 10 minutes to allow for congestion etc.
39. In a very busy pre-Christmas shopping period, that would have almost certainly been the case at the time of the alleged contravention.
40. 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.

41. 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.
42. 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.

43. In a recent claim number F0DP201T on the 10th June 2019 in Southampton Court District Judge Taylor dismissed a case from BW Legal on the basis that it included a false amount of £60 (appendix 16).
44. BW Legal have included a similar false amount in this claim also, which indicates their intentional abuse of the legal process.

45. Given the multitude of inaccuracies and falsehoods contained in the Claim, the Defendant considers it totally spurious, therefore he invites the Judge to strike it out.
46. 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.
47. The Defendant believes that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.

Castle

With regards to point 32; Britannia Parking Ltd are not members of the BPA so you should refer to Britannia Parking Group Ltd failures to comply.

IloveBritannia

well spotted Castle, just when I started thinking that I'd nailed at last

Coupon-mad

None of the WS should be in the third person. It reads in a clunky way when you word things like this 'the Defendant' (like in a defence) when at WS stage, it needs to be ''I'':

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.

IloveBritannia wrote: »

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!

I don't get why you are checking their letters. This was never about the letters.

Is the CLAIMANT on the CLAIM FORM a dormant company 'Britannia Parking Ltd'? Then that needs to feature near the start of the WS. And it must be fatal to their case.

And where is bargepole's line now, or 'The Defence is repeated'? No-one told you to remove that.

This (below) is all far too helpful to the Claimant. Why show pics of a standard 'P' entrance sign that is in the format the CoP requires? Don't even mention it and certainly no pic of it, and NEVER call a PPC sign 'a pronounced sign'!:

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 (appendix 3).
8. The Defendant did have to look away from the direction of driving in order to notice the sign.
9. Driving further on the Defendant did notice a pronounced sign of the Range store (appendix 4).

And this doesn't read well for your case; you do NOT have to help the Claimant by showing your failed appeal (who cares, it was only an appeal and has no meaning in court):

12. On the Defendant’s return home he decided to appeal the parking charge (appendix 5).
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.

This should be point #1 IMHO, giving all three company numbers:

the Supplier was a different company to both the one which issued the Claim and the one which issued the PCN.

IloveBritannia

Many thanks Coupon-mad, I'll get straight on it!