Letter Before Claim - VCS

q2uantum

Hi coupan-mad,

Thanks for the response.

I will add that the Caernarfon case involves the same company.

As for defening as driver, I had already said a few posts earlier that I think it would be better to do so after thinking about redx's comments over the weekend, hence why i change the witness statement to say things like "when I returned back to he vehicle"

Is this not advisable in your own opinion?


I will also add my objection to the attempted 5 years worth of interest.

Thanks

Q2

Coupon-mad

Ah good, I share Redx's view. Then I recommend you say near the start of your witness account that you were the driver and are offering the only true and honest 'eye witness' account of the lack of signage, and that your WS stands apart from VCS' one which is all 'template legal argument/cut & paste' with no substance.

Why does your WS not reference/demolish theirs, like you see in all other VCS threads at this stage? I always tell people to wait for VCS' rubbish WS and to then demolish all the case law in it, by searching the forum for a surname from that 'case law'.

Demolishing VCS' template WS of utter dross has been done so many times before on here in the past year or two, and is right here in less than one second flat for you, for the want of searching.

I see nothing in your draft WS blowing a bomb up under theirs. Has it not arrived? Are you doing yours too early?

q2uantum

Thanks Coupon-Mad, I will add that I am giving a true and honest eye witness statement.

I have a few bits to add from previous posts so I will repost it later today.


As for not mentioning the witness statement from VCS that is because I havent received one yet, I haven't even received a copy of their DQ. They replied to one of my SAR requests but not to the request for erasing of old data!

I was getting my statement all sorted ready for when theirs turned up, so I can then add more to it. My court date is the 6th November, so I was aiming to get mine all polished off and delivered to the court on the morning of the 21st October(16 days before), and posted to VCS that day (1st Class - with proof of postage).

Thanks

q2

nosferatu1001

Is that what your court order states? WOrth double checking.

q2uantum

nosferatu1001 wrote: »

Is that what your court order states? WOrth double checking.

Do you mean with regards to the amount of days before that the witness statement/evidence needs to be produced to the court and the claimant?

If so then yes, there was a photocopied set of papers with the court order that stated it had to be with them at least 14 days before hand, hence why I am doing it 16 days before hand.

q2uantum

I have now added all the suggestions in to my witness statement and the new draft is shown below. As I still havent received anything from VCS then I cant attack theirs yet in it so I will no doubt be amending / adding to it in the future.

Could someone please cast an eye over the following sections that I have amended from my previous statement:

#1 - Added I was the driver
#9 - Added (IPC Ode Of Practice Part E Schedule 1 - for the entrance signage)
#12 - Changed the wording slightly and added an extract from Pace v Lengyel - Hopefully I have added the correct extract
#14 - Slight wording change to state that the case involved this same claimant
#15 - New paragraph objecting to the interest due to the claimants dragging it out over 5 years (maybe the wording could be harsher?) - all paragraphs below it have now been renumbered


Witness statement:

I, ************ of **************************************** am the defendant in this case. 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.

1. The facts in this statement come from my personal knowledge, as I was the driver of the vehicle and was there in person. Where they are not within my own knowledge there are true to the best of my information and belief.

2. I am not liable to the Claimant for the sum claimed, or any amount at all and this is my Witness Statement in support of my defence as already filed.

3. The vehicle was parked in a car park that is located at the end of xxxxxxx Road, xxxxxx. Upon returning to the vehicle I noticed the Parking Charge Notice (PCN) attached to the windscreen.

4. Upon looking at the PCN, I noticed that it had been incorrectly and not fully completed - (See Exhibit XX01). The date of the alleged offence was recorded just as /x/xx, with no record of the actual day recorded on it. Also The location on the PCN is stated as xxxxx Road, which is a public Highway (see Exhibit XX02) which means VCS do not have any rights to ticket vehicles on the address shown.

5. Due to being the day to day keeper, and the car being a lease car then I contacted Vehicle Control Services Ltd (VCS) to advise of this, giving them my name and address as the keeper of the vehicle, so that they would communicate with myself and not the lease company.

6. I received a letter from BW Legal, who claimed to be acting on behalf of VCS with regards to this alleged offence, which I duly replied to appealing that the signage wasn’t clear, was damaged and with some signs missing, so it was hard to tell which spaces if any that VCS controlled. I received communication back from them saying that my appeal was unsuccessful and that they were going to continue to chase for payment.

7. I then asked for proof of the signage on the day in question, which they eventually sent me through some pictures which were dated xx months after the date in question.

8. For some unknown reason BWLegal then started the entire process again, sending me their original letter, but this time with a different reference on it. I contacted them back asking them to resolve this ASAP, and that one of their departments needed to speak to the other department. After a gap of about 2 years, VCS then sent me a Letter Before Claim from their own company, rather than BWLegal.

9. I re-visited the location of the car park and noticed that there is no signage on either entry to the car park (Exhibit XX03) that complies with the parking standards that VCS should comply with (IPC Code of Practice Part E Schedule 1). The only signage on the entries to the car park are out of date signs warning of CLAMPING (Exhibit XX04). These signs are still there today, nearly 5 years after the alleged offence.

10. The car park itself is a shared car park for some Flats, more than half the car park does not have any signage from VCS on it (Exhibit XX5). There is no clear signage to distinguish which spaces are controlled by the VCS signs, so how could anyone know where they can or can not park.

11. As stated earlier the VCS signage on the car park at the time of the alleged infringement of contract, was certainly not in the best of states, which can be seen from the pictures that I took shortly after the alleged contravention (a few weeks later, rather than the x months later that VCS revisited to send me pictures of the new signs that had put up!). The signage was either damaged, missing or covered in Ivy (See Exhibits XX06, XX07, XX08). You can also see from one of the photos supplied by VCS that signage was missing in the area the car was parked (Exhibit XX09).

12. The wording on the signage is also not very clear as to who can or can not park there. It only states VALID PERMIT HOLDERS have to display a permit, nowhere does it state that you cannot park there if you do NOT have a permit, nor does it state where to get a permit from.

Pace v Lengyel (Claim Number C7GF6E3R) in the County Court of Manchester was struck out for similar reasons, with District Judge Iyer stating: “It must have been obvious to the claimant that if it erected a sign proving that it was a term of the contract that the driver of any parked vehicle displays a permit, it must have known in advance that many drivers would simply be unable to do this. Therefore, insofar as there was any contract between the parties, it was invalid under the doctrine of impossibility of performance.” (Exhibit XX10)


13. The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4 (POFA) (Exhibit XX11) 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). This also depends upon the Claimant fully complying with the statute, including 'adequate notice' of the parking charge and prescribed documents served in time/with mandatory wording. It is submitted the claimant has failed on all counts and the Claimant is well aware their artificially inflated claim, as pleaded, constitutes double recovery.

14. 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 and here I quote from the cases cited above:
“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”

Also that is not an isolated judgment striking a parking claim out for repeatedly adding sums they are not entitled to recover. In the Caernarfon Court in Case number FTQZ4W28, which involved this claimant (Vehicle Control Services Ltd v Davies) on 4th September 2019, District Judge Jones-Evans stated:

''Upon it being recorded that District Judge Jones-Evans has over a very significant period of time warned advocates [...] in many cases of this nature before this court that their claim for £60 is unenforceable in law and is an abuse of process and is nothing more than a poor attempt to go behind the decision of the Supreme Court v Beavis which inter alia decided that a figure of £160 as a global sum claimed in this case would be a penalty and not a genuine pre-estimate of loss and therefore unenforceable in law and if the practice continued he would treat all cases as a claim for £160 and therefore a penalty and unenforceable in law it is hereby declared [...] the claim is struck out and declared to be wholly without merit and an abuse of process.''

15. The Claimant is also trying to claim Interest at 8% for the time that this has been ongoing. I object strongly to this due to the claimant trying and failing with BW Legal, and then only resurrecting this nearly 5 years later, its is themselves and not myself that has dragged this out over this length of time.

16. Vehicle Control Services Ltd is not the lawful occupier of the land. I have reasonable belief that they do not have the authority to issue charges on this land in their own name and that they have no rights to bring this case.

17. The Claimant is not the landowner and is merely an agent acting on behalf of the landowner and has failed to demonstrate their legal standing to form a contract.

18. The Claimant is put to proof that it has sufficient interest in the land or that there are specific terms in its contract to bring an action on its own behalf. As a third party agent, the Claimant may not pursue any charge. I have reasonable belief that they do not have the authority to issue charges on this land in their own name and that they have no right to bring action regarding this claim.

19. I would like to point out that according to their parking sign this parking area does not offer a free parking period, so the ParkingEye v Beavis does not apply in this case.

20. The Claimant is stating that they had a legitimate interest to set the charge. However, the time of the alleged contravention was on a Saturday as is shown from the pictures provided to me by the Claimant. There is no legitimate interest that is being protected as there are no businesses operating at the parking area at that time, so it is unclear what legitimate interest is being protected at that time.

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



Thanks

q2

1505grandad

q2uantum

A few observations:-


Para 1 - typo - Where they are not within my own knowledge (there) are true to the best of my information and belief.

Para 11 - "......months later that VCS revisited to send me pictures of the new signs that had put up!)." - is there a "they" missing before "had put up!"

"Also that is not an isolated judgment striking a parking..........." - usually has its own para number i.e. #15

Para 18 - perhaps add "strict" - "The Claimant is put to "strict" proof that it has sufficient interest"

The Abuse of Process paras - just checking if the paras in WS are enough or is it necessary to put in All the usual paras in view of the time the Judge has to read the WS?.


(Hat tip to Redx) who recently posted - I would add the recent Judge Giddins cases at Southampton too, to reinforce Grand and Taylor , see the thread by mixMZ plus the one by Beadyroller

q2uantum

Thanks 1505Grandad I will amend it with your suggestions.

Just to advise I am 7 days away from submitting my statement to the court and I still haven't received anything from VCS with regards to their witness statement. What are people's views on this?

Do I just concentrate on finalising mine and completing the pack to take to the court on Monday 21st? Or do I still sit and wait for theirs to turn up and rush it all last minute?

What are my options if theirs doesn't turn up by the 14 days? I do know that they have paid the court fee as I contacted the court last week to check.

Thanks

Q2

nosferatu1001

You get tiers in on time. Get it done
You don't need their WS to write yours.

Submit to the court on time, and of course to VCS

If theirs does not arrive by day 14 before, then
- call the court, ask if they have vcs copy on file
- state YOU do not have your copy, and they have broken the court order of xx date by judge yy.
- follow up the conversation with a letter to the court, asking this to be put on file, stating the same and confirming the call at x date y time with z person (so get their name!) asking this to be brought to the attention of the judge.

State this is of great detriment to you as so far all you have are inadequate particulars about ... (give what you know of the event - vague is good, you're showing you're disadvantaged) and absolutely no evidence from the claimant, so you have no idea what they will AMBUSH you with on the day. You object to their late filing, should they do so, and you ask the court to not grant relief from sanction but instead strike their WS out. This would mean the claimant cannot prove every (or any) element of their claim, so their claim must fail.

Coupon-mad

Just to advise I am 7 days away from submitting my statement to the court and I still haven't received anything from VCS with regards to their witness statement. What are people's views on this?

Wait till the last minute to actually file & serve yours, but right now, have it finalised and include the usual stuff you find in pretty much every VCS defence thread, that demolishes VCS' template WS.

That's right - you will find their WS is a template and we've done this before and you should be reading other VCS claim/defence threads to kick out any case law arguments that they WILL trot out.

None of their utter drivel should be news to you when you get the inches thick WS!

e.g. you need to know that they will misquote Roch LJ in Vine v Waltham Forest and in your case it is relevant that you need to properly highlight that case, which Miss Vine won based on signage that was genuinely not seen, which WAS and can be a defence.

Search the forum for VCS Vine Roch and change to SHOW RESULTS AS POSTS.