Letter Before Claim - SCS Law & UKPC - Please Advise

CVKTA

Evening all, WS #1 below. Struggled with this one for some reason so please critique and pull apart where necessary. (to be submitted 24/06) Thanks as always

In the County Court at XXX

BETWEEN:

UK PARKING CONTROL LTD

Claimant

V

XXXX

Defendant

Claim no: XXX

Witness statement of XXX, Defendant

I am the Defendant in this matter, I am unrepresented, with no experience of Court procedures. If I do not set out documents in the way that the Claimant may do, I trust the Court will excuse my inexperience. Attached to this statement is a paginated bundle of documents to which I will refer.

In this Witness statement, the facts and matters stated are true and within my own knowledge, except where indicated otherwise.

1. During the time of the alleged offences, I, along with my husband were owners of XXXXXXXXX; a 3rd floor residential property on the XXXX Estate.

2. There are no terms within my Lease requiring residents to display parking permits or park in a marked bay, or to pay penalties to third parties, such as the Claimant has averred and there is a large body of case law which establishes this. The Claimant has taken over the location and runs a business as if the site were a public car park, offering terms with £100 penalties on the same basis to residents, as is on offer to the general public and trespassers. However, residents are granted a right of way in the lease and parking terms cannot be re-offered as a contract by a third party. This interferes with the terms of lease, of which this parking firm is not a party to.

Full lease agreement appended Pages 51-82 of Evidence PDF.

2.1 In Jopson v Homeguard [2016] B9GF0A9E, on appeal it was found that the parking company could not override the tenant's right to temporarily stop near the building entrance for loading/unloading.

CASE APPENDED Pages 12-22 of Evidence PDF.

2.2 In Pace v Mr N [2016] C6GF14F0 [2016] it was found that the parking company could not override the tenant's right to park by requiring a permit to park.

CASE APPENDED  Pages 23-28 of Evidence PDF.

3. The Claimant is pursuing  five PCNs which are tenuously based upon signage setting 'parking charges' at a level of £100 each, (5 x £1000 = £500) yet the Claimant is trying to recover a claim totalling an eye watering £930. The purported added 'costs' are disproportionate, a disingenuous double recovery attempt, vague and in breach of both the CPRs, and the Consumer Rights Act 2015 Schedule 2 ('the CRA') 'terms that may be unfair'.

3.1 In Britannia Parking v Chris Crosby F0DP806M  [2019] it was found that the parking company, by inflating their charges by £60.00, were committing an abuse of process of court

CASE APPENDED Pages 29-35 of Evidence PDF.

4. I pointed out to the claimant on numerous correspondences that they do not have the legal authority to add £60.00 to each claim.

I finally pointed this out to the claimant that they still hadn’t substantiated their claim in an email dated 21-May 2020 and offered them a truce on the claim and a 7 day window to respond.

This was ignored and I followed this up with an email on 03-June 2020

Email correspondence APPENDED Pages 1-2 of Evidence PDF.

4.1 It is claimed that these inflated costs are disproportionate and disingenuous 

4.2 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.

4.3 The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4 (POFA) at 4(5) 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). The Claimant, or their legal representatives, has added an additional sum of £60 or £40 to each original £100 parking charge. It is submitted that this is an attempt at double recovery by the Claimant, which the Court should not uphold, even in the event that Judgment for Claimant is awarded.

4.4 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:

''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...''

SCHEDULE 4 OF POFA APPENDED Pages 39-40 of Evidence PDF.

Accordingly it is denied that:

5. there was any agreement between the Defendant and the Claimant.

5.1 the Claimant has suffered loss or damage or that there is a lawful basis to pursue a claim for loss.

5.2 It is further denied that the signage is clearly displayed. The signs in this car park are not prominent, clear, lit well, or legible from all parking spaces and there is insufficient notice of the sum of the parking charge itself.

PHOTO OF SIGN VS BEAVIS SIGN APPENDED Page 11 of Evidence PDF.

6. I invite the Court to dismiss this claim in its entirety, and to award my costs of attendance at the hearing, such as are allowable pursuant to CPR 27.14.

I believe that the facts stated in this Witness Statement are true

Signature of Defendant:

Name:

Date:

Umkomaas

I believe that the facts stated in this Witness Statement are true

There's a much more up to date Statement of Truth that must now be placed in Defences and Witness Statements. You can find it in the NEWBIES FAQ sticky, second post, or via a Google search. 

CVKTA

Yes indeed, a silly mistake there!

Umkomaas

CVKTA said:

Yes indeed, a silly mistake there!

No problem, just making sure you're on the right track. You don't need to be behind the curve in comparison with what the PPC might churn out. 

KeithP

Para 3. (5 x £1000 = £500)    <<< that's not quite right.

Para 5. Should that read "5. there was any agreement between the Driver and the Claimant"?

Lots of good stuff in there but I cannot see where you have stated what actually happened on the day. You will need to explain the alleged transgression to the Court.

Coupon-mad

1. During the time of the alleged parking events offences, I, along with my husband and I were owners of

You haven't mentioned 'no landowner authority' nor anything about Jack Chapman signing their WS; or haven't you got their WS from Jack yet?

Also I expect their photos have been taken in 3 minutes flat each time?  If I am right you can also cite the IPC Grace Periods requirements.

Le_Kirk

Attached to this statement is a paginated bundle of documents marked CVKTA_001 - CVKTA_xxx to which I will refer.

Better to have a numbering system and then in court you can say "I refer to my evidence marked CVKTA_001" instead of "Full lease agreement appended Pages 51- 82 of Evidence PDF."

This interferes with the terms of lease, of which this parking firm is not a party to.

4. I pointed out to the claimant on in numerous correspondences that they do not have the legal authority to add £60.00 to each claim.

CVKTA

Thanks both, looking to spend some time on this tonight.

MothballsWallet

Umkomaas said:

I'm not sure whether the courts will decompress files, maybe the restriction is in relation to the number of pages they are prepared to print than the actual file size? Converting your Word document to a pdf file should produce some reduction. 

For major word processing work I use an iMac through which I can convert my Word document to pdf format, then with an additional function to further reduce the file size. That makes a significant difference. It's absolutely fine for text, but some of the closer detail of images can result in some blurring at the edges. 

If you're using a Windows PC, I'm sure there must be a similar pdf file size reduction function. 

You can also try compressing PDFs using a site like I Love PDF - I use this myself, especially after scanning a document, when the resulting PDF file is very large because of it being images repackaged to PDF.

I've seen very good results with this. The Adobe Acrobat Reader DC app on Windows does contain a compress function, but I can't remember if you have to have an Adobe account/subscription or not to use it (as I always go to I Love PDF because of how many PDF management functions it has).

#NotSponsored

CVKTA

Coupon-mad said:

1. During the time of the alleged parking events offences, I, along with my husband and I were owners of

You haven't mentioned 'no landowner authority' nor anything about Jack Chapman signing their WS; or haven't you got their WS from Jack yet?

Also I expect their photos have been taken in 3 minutes flat each time?  If I am right you can also cite the IPC Grace Periods requirements.

@Coupon-mad , WS not received yet, they are due to submit at the same time as I am.
I'm just going through suggested edits from you guys and just wanted check on IPC Grace Periods - quick research shows this should be 10 mins? Looking at tickets / photos from their 'evidence', 1 example is ticket issued at 20:43:36 and pictures are time stamped ranging from 20:44:07 - 20:44:24. There are other examples across the 5 tickets, just wanted to check that what I have details is 'contestable'?
Thanks