Britannia + BW Legal court papers

IloveBritannia

Coupon-mad wrote: »

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''::

It definitely did read in a clunky way, I must have read it somewhere that it should be the third person.

Coupon-mad wrote: »

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'!::

I do get that, but how best make my point about poor signage? Also I only described the Range sign as pronounced, perhaps that does not read too clearly...

IloveBritannia

I have tried to incorporate all suggestion from helpful members so this is hopefully the final draft:



WITNESS STATEMENT
1. I, xxxxxxxxx, am the Defendant in this claim. The facts in this statement come from my personal knowledge.
2. The defence is repeated.
3. I note that the company which issued the Claim is not the company which issued the original Parking Charge Notice.
4. The company which issued the PCN is Britannia Parking Group Limited (company no. 08182990).
5. The company which issued the Claim is Britannia Parking Limited (company no. 03175808) which is a dormant company.
6. A company which was contracted to run administration of the car park at the time was Britannia Parking Services Limited (company no. 08187238), however that company does not appear to have had an authorisation from the Landowner to do so.

7. Towards the end of November 2017 I 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.
8. Although I’m the registered keeper of the car in question, I did not drive it on that day at all. I only use that car very occasionally as I own and drive a different one.
9. The PCN contained two digital images of the car (front and back), however on them there was no landmarks nor street furniture identifying its location, neither were any visible time stamps (appendix 1).
10. Although I strongly suspected that the PCN was a scam, I decided to visit the location of the alleged contravention.
11. There was no visible parking restriction signage at the approach to the park (appendix 2).
12. Although there was some signage further down the drive, not only it was blending in with other surrounding signage, but also the driver would have to look away to notice it, also it was positioned just past a speed hump, which would have made the driver look directly at the road surface whilst passing over it (appendix 3).
13. Driving further onto the mini roundabout I did notice a pronounced sign, however that was a Range store sign (appendix 4).
14. I then entered that store and asked a manager if their customers were reporting getting fined for parking there.
15. 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.
16. On my return home I decided to appeal the parking charge (appendix 5).
17. I chose to ignore further demands from Britannia Parking Group Ltd and their alleged debt recovery agents as I thought that they were clearly fraudulent.
18. Towards the end of August 2018 upon my return from 2 weeks’ summer holiday I 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.
19. Both letters were to inform me that BW Legal was instructed by Britannia Parking Limited to recover the balance due (appendices 6 & 7).
20. I replied by email on 29th August explaining my point of view (appendix 8).
21. The following day I received a Letter of Claim from BW Legal dated 28th August which warned me of an impending legal action potentially resulting in a £241.25 court claim unless I had paid the £160 balance by 2nd October 2018 (appendix 9).
22. 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.
23. As it was clear that our correspondence criss-crossed each other I wrote another email on the 7th September in which I advised BW Legal that I would be disregarding their Letter of Claim pending a receipt of further evidence from them (appendix 10).
24. On the 8th September I received a letter from BW Legal containing copies of some of my 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 me previously. Still there was nothing to link the pictures with the location of the alleged contravention.
25. I replied to that letter by email on the 21st September, advising BW Legal that their evidence was insufficient for me to accept. An exchange of emails followed where each party got entrenched in their own positions (appendix 11).
26. In late October I received a notice of a county court claim issued (dated 19th October).

27. Following the receipt of that notice I started preparing my defence, in which process several facts came to light:

28. 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).
29. As the Claimant was not the issuer of the original PCN, their claim had no legal basis.
30. 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.
31. The Landowner at the time of the alleged contravention was Benson Elliott (appendix 13).
32. 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).
33. Not only there was no evidence therein of any relations between the Landowner and the Care Facilities Management,
34. But also the Supplier was a different company to both the one which issued the Claim and the one which issued the PCN.

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

36. 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.
37. No such information was included within the PCN issued to me (appendix 1).
38. 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.
39. This also indicates that Britannia Parking Group Ltd failed the POFA 2012 requirements.

40. 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).
41. 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.
42. In a very busy pre-Christmas shopping period, that would have almost certainly been the case at the time of the alleged contravention.
43. 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.

44. 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.
45. 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.

46. 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).
47. BW Legal have included a similar false amount in this claim also, which indicates their intentional abuse of the legal process.

48. Given the multitude of inaccuracies and falsehoods contained in the Claim, I consider it totally spurious, therefore I invite the Judge to strike it out.
49. As I’m having to take time of work in order to attend the hearing, I will be seeking to recover both my travelling expenses and the loss of earnings.
50. I believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.

Signed:
Date:

IloveBritannia

Guys,

Many thanks for your input and have a great weekend everyone, I'll be emailing off my WS v.4 within an hour and hopefully will get a right result in a fortnight!

IloveBritannia

Dear all,

As I haven't received the claimant's WS, today I decided to call the court office who told me that BW cancelled their claim last Tuesday.:j

Many thanks to everyone who has chipped in or taken interest, I'm truly in awe of those of you who choose to sacrify their time to help the others this way.:A

Le_Kirk

IloveBritannia wrote: »

As I haven't received the claimant's WS, today I decided to call the court office who told me that BW cancelled their claim last Tuesday.

Nice of BW to tell you so you didn't have to go through more anguish and have to phone the court! Well done on your win.

IloveBritannia

Ha ha, no they didn't let me know, I only found out because I called the court!

Many thanks for your comment however any 'well done' needs to be addressed to the amazing contributors and not to my incompetent self