Without a written contract is a parking charge notice enforceable?

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11. The Defendant also has made it clear that in any event local facilities were being used.

12. In correspondence received by the Defendant, the Claimant relies on the case of ParkingEye v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67 as a binding precedent on the lower court. However, that only assists the Claimant if the facts of the case are the same, or broadly the same. In Beavis, it was common ground between the parties that the terms of a contract had been breached, whereas it is the Defendant's position that no such breach occurred in this case

13.


14.1. Even if the Defendant is shown to be the driver on every occasion, which is denied the Claimant does not have the authority to Charge from the landowner.


17. The Claimant is put to strict proof that it has sufficient proprietary interest in the land, or that it has the necessary authorisation from the landowner to issue parking charge notices, and to pursue payment by means of litigation.

18. The principle of primacy of contract is overriding any purported terms conveyed by a parking operator's signage, is well rehearsed in numerous persuasive Judgments given at various County Court hearing centres. The Defendant will provide transcripts of a selection of Approved Judgments supporting this principle at the appropriate time, should this matter proceed to trial.

19. Wholly unreasonable and vexatious claim – since there is no legitimate interest or likelihood of success given the lack of authority from the landowner

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21. The presence of the Claimant on the land will have supposedly been to manage parking by uninvited persons, and for the benefit of the actual leaseholders.
Instead, a predatory operation has been carried out on those very people whose interests the Claimant was purportedly there to uphold, with a lack of authority to do soo.

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It is denied that the Claimant has standing to bring any claim in the absence of a contract that expressly permits the Claimant to do so, in addition to merely undertaking 'parking management'. It is not admitted that the Claimant has contractual or other lawful authority to make contracts with residents at this location, and/or to bring proceedings against the Defendant. The Claimant is put to strict proof. Further, and in the alternative, the Defendant avers that the Claimant requires the permission of the owner of the relevant land - not merely another contractor or site agent not in possession - in order to commence proceedings.

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The POFA, at Section 4(5) states that the maximum sum that may be recovered from the keeper is the charge stated on the Notice to Keeper, in this case for 11 PCNs, (as stated in their witness statement)~ a
maximum of £1100.00 depending on the Claimant's full compliance with the POFA and establishing a breach of a 'relevant obligation' and/or 'relevant contract'.

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22.1. This claim inflates the total to an eye-watering £1920.00, this equates to £174.55 in a clear attempt at double recovery, and a strange amount. The Defendant trusts that the presiding Judge will recognise this wholly unreasonable conduct as a gross abuse of process and may consider using the court's case management powers to strike the claim out of the court's own volition.
The acid test is whether the conduct permits of a reasonable explanation, but the Defendant avers it cannot. Furthermore in any bulk claim it cannot simply be a case of adding an amount to every Parking Charge notice on a global claim.

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22.2. According to Ladak v DRC Locums UKEAT/0488/13/LA the claimant can only recover the direct and provable costs of the time spent on preparing the claim in a legal capacity, not any administration costs allegedly incurred by already remunerated clerical staff working for SCS Law in issuing robo-claims.
22.3. Not only are such costs not permitted (CPR 27.14) but the Defendant believes that the Claimant has not incurred legal costs at all. The Defendant avers that no solicitor is likely to have supervised this current batch of cut & paste claims at all.

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22.4. It was held in the Supreme Court in Beavis (where £85 was claimed, and no more) that a private parking charge already includes a very significant and high percentage in profit and more than covers the costs of running an automated regime of template letters. It is also a fact that debt collection agencies act on a no-win-no-fee basis for parking operators, so no such costs have been incurred in truth

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Thus, there can be no 'damages' to pile on top of any parking charge claim, and the Defendant asks that the Court takes judicial notice of this repeated abuse of consumers rights and remedies, caused by parking firms artificially inflating their robo-claims.

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22.5 In any event this whole vexatious claim has been hindered and made difficult and time consuming by the lack of clarity initially around the Claimants contract and indeed who the Claimant is actually in contract with to be able administer Parking Charges on behalf of, this still remains the case to this date with the Claimants effort to deny the original contract and claim the parties upstream have not changed.

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23. It is submitted that the conduct of the Claimant in pursuing this claim is wholly unreasonable and vexatious.
As such, the Defendant is keeping careful note of all wasted time/costs in dealing with this matter and should the case continue to trial, the Defendant will seek further costs, pursuant to Civil Procedure Rule 27.14(2)(g).