County Court Claim Form from VCS

The_Deep

I am surprised that ou have not complained to your MP. Do so now, these scammers have no place in residential car parks as nine times out of ten these tickets are scams.

Parliament is well aware of the MO of these private parking companies, and on 15th March 2019 a Bill was enacted to curb the excesses of these shysters. Codes of Practice are being drawn up, an independent appeals service will be set up, and access to the DVLA's date base more rigorously policed, persistent offenders denied access to the DVLA database and unable to operate.

Hopefully life will become impossible for the worst of these scammers, but until this is done you should still complain to your MP, citing the new legislation.

http://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/2019/8/contents/enacted

Just as the clampers were finally closed down, so hopefully will many of these Private Parking Companies.

Someone_new

Ok, I've now received a 'Proposed Allocation to the Small Claims Track. I need to complete the Small Claims Questionnaire (Form N180) and file it with the County Court at Northampton by the 18th?

KeithP

Someone_new wrote: »

Ok, I've now received a 'Proposed Allocation to the Small Claims Track. I need to complete the Small Claims Questionnaire (Form N180) and file it with the County Court at Northampton by the 18th?

OK, why the question mark?

Comprehensive guidance on how to answer every question on that form can be found in Bargepole's 'what happens when' post linked from post #2 of the NEWBIES thread.

Coupon-mad

All normal.

The N180 is covered in the NEWBIES thread in bargepole's COURT PROCEDURES post.

Redx

you should have been expecting this and planning for it by reading that NEWBIES thread , stop waiting for something to happen and get in front of what happens , when it happens and what you do about it

Someone_new

Hello, so I've been allocated a court date and I've been waiting for the evidence from VCS. I've received it, they're obviously coming up with arguments to counter all my points, but in their evidence they've got an email I sent them back when this all first occurred with a copy of the valid parking permit, dated for the day in question. They've also provided photos their goon took, but they don't show all of the inside of my car where the permit could have been. Am I right in thinking they've shot themselves in the foot here? I just have to point to the evidence that I had the permit, it was on display in my car in a position they've conveniently not photographed and I have a witness statement to that effect from the person who issued the permit? Surely that should be enough?

Coupon-mad

Am I right in thinking they've shot themselves in the foot here? I just have to point to the evidence that I had the permit, it was on display in my car in a position they've conveniently not photographed and I have a witness statement to that effect from the person who issued the permit? Surely that should be enough?

No. You need a proper and thorough WS and evidence and costs schedule, filed & served in time (see your court letter). You need to shoot down all the cases they rely on (easy).

See other VCS threads, as this week I think I have had to say to at least 4 others how to demolish that template WS from VCS as it's been done before.

Someone_new

Hello all, below is a copy of my first draft of my witness statement, some of it cribbed from other defences to demolish VCS's arguments and also parts from their own evidence that contradict's their claim. I'd appreciate it if someone could give it a once over:

In the County Court at XXXXXXX
Claim No. XXXXXXX

Between

Vehicle Control Services (Claimant)

and

XXXXXXX (Defendant)


WITNESS STATEMENT

I, XXXXXXXX, of XXXXXXXX, will say as follows:

I am the Defendant and registered keeper of the vehicle in this case. I am unrepresented with no legal background or training and have had no previous experience of county court procedures. If I do not set out documents in the correct way, I trust the Court will excuse my inexperience.

Attached to this statement is a paginated bundle of evidentiary documents marked Exhibit HC1 to HC22 to which I will refer.

1. The Defendant denies that the Claimant is entitled to relief in the sum claimed, or at all.

2. The Claimant asserts that my vehicle was parked without displaying a parking permit.

3. Before I describe what happened on the day that my vehicle was parked in the Cavendish Court Car Park (“the Car Park”), I confirm that the essence of my defence to this claim is that:
a. I have not breached any terms and conditions of parking.
b. My vehicle was parked with a valid permit.
Background

4. On the afternoon of the 2nd of February 2015 at approx. 1PM, I drove into the entrance of the Car Park in question and parked my car.
5. I parked the car in an area of the car park next to the car parking bays controlled by the claimant, but not in them. This is clear in their own submitted pictures. The bays stop before the area where my car was parked.
6. I was visiting a friend who was a resident of the apartments owned by ‘Places for People’. The residents are authorised to validate parking permits. My friend did so, a copy of the permit is included both in the claimants evidence and my own. As is a witness statement from the issuer of the permit asserting to it’s authenticity.
7. I placed the permit on my dashboard, visible through the windshield on the passenger side.

8. However, on closing the car door, it appears the draught caused by this (it was a windy day) has blown the permit onto the passenger seat of the car. This is not visible in the photographs supplied as evidence by the claimant, as the photographs do not show the entire of the passenger seat.

9. Returning to my car at approx. 1:55 I found one of the claimants ‘PCN’ envelopes attached to my windscreen. As I had a valid permit, I tried to contact the claimant by phone to speak with them about this. I was unable to speak to anyone who could help me with this.
10. I then contacted the claimant by email, including a copy of the valid permit. This is in their evidence YC1, clearly time and date stamped at 17:45 on the 2nd of February 2015. I received no reply.

12. In Exhibit YC1 of the Claimants’ Witness Statement, an overhead of a large area of Sheffield is included. The Claimant claims this is an overhead of Cavendish court. It is not. If that was true, Cavendish Court would encompass an area from Devonshire Green to Hannover Way, which is approximately 0.6 miles away. At that scale, the area covered by Cavendish court would be about 4 square mile. The Claimants evidence does claim this is ‘not to scale’ but it’s not even an accurate representation of the area they claimed to manage.
13. Exibit YCS paragraph 51 of the claimant’s evidence has included copies of their contracts with Places for People in an attempt to validate their right to make a claim, countering paragraph 7 of my original defence. However, the contracts included are for periods that run for 12 months from October 11th 2011, and then for 12 months from 23rd of May 2017. The incident in question took place on 2nd of Feb 2015. There is no valid contract provided for that period. In Paragraph 54 the Claimant also denies Paragraph 10 of my evidence, citing the same contracts. Again they do not cover the period of the incident.

Costs on the claim – disproportionate and disingenuous

14. In addition to the 'parking charge', the Claimant has artificially inflated the value of the Claim by adding costs of £60 which has not actually been incurred by the Claimant, and which are artificially invented figures in an attempt to circumvent the Small Claims costs rules using double recovery.

15. CPR 44.3 (2) states: “Where the amount of costs is to be assessed on the standard basis, the court will –
(a) only allow costs which are proportionate to the matters in issue. Costs which are disproportionate in amount may be disallowed or reduced even if they were reasonably or necessarily incurred; and
(b) resolve any doubt which it may have as to whether costs were reasonably and proportionately incurred or were reasonable and proportionate in amount in favour of the paying party.”

16. Whilst quantified costs can be considered on a standard basis, this Claimant's purported costs are wholly disproportionate and do not stand up to scrutiny.

17. The standard wording for parking charge/debt recovery contracts is on the Debt Recovery Plus website - ''no recovery/no fee'', thus establishing an argument that the Claimant is breaching the indemnity principle - claiming reimbursement for a cost which has never, in fact, been incurred. This is true, whether or not they used a third-party debt collector during the process.

18. In fact, it is averred that the Claimant has not paid or incurred such damages/costs or 'legal fees' at all. Any debt collection letters were a standard feature of a low-cost business model and are already counted within the parking charge itself and there has been no legal advice or personal involvement by any solicitor in churning out this template claim.

19. 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.

20. Unlike this mendacious and greedy Claimant, ParkingEye themselves took on board the Beavis case outcome and they never add fake costs on top of the parking charge. It is indisputable that an alleged 'parking charge' penalty is a sum which the Supreme Court found is already inflated to more than comfortably cover all costs. The case provides a finding of fact by way of precedent, that the £85 (or up to a Trade Body ceiling of £100 depending upon the parking firm) covers the costs of the letters, and all parking firms are very familiar with this case. The Defendant refers to the following paragraphs given in the judgement on the 4th of November 2015 in ParkingEye v Beavis:

at para 98. {re ...The desirability of running that parking scheme at no cost, or ideally some profit, to themselves} ''Against this background, it can be seen that the £85 charge had two main objects. One was to manage the efficient use of parking space in the interests of the retail outlets, and of the users of those outlets who wish to find spaces in which to park their cars [...] The other purpose was to provide an income stream to enable ParkingEye to meet the costs of operating the scheme and make a profit from its services...''

at para 193. ''Judging by ParkingEye’s accounts, and unless the Chelmsford car park was out of the ordinary, the scheme also covered ParkingEye's costs of operation and gave their shareholders a healthy annual profit.''

at para 198. ''The charge has to be and is set at a level which enables the managers to recover the costs of operating the scheme. It is here also set at a level enabling ParkingEye to make a profit.''

21. Any purported 'legal costs' are also made up out of thin air. Given the fact that robo-claim solicitors and parking firms process tens of thousands of claims handled by an admin team or paralegals, the Defendant avers that no solicitor is likely to have supervised this current batch of cut & paste claims. The court is invited to note that no named Solicitor has signed the Particulars, in breach of Practice Direction 22, and rendering the statement of truth a nullity.

22. According to Ladak v DRC Locums UKEAT/0488/13/LA a Claimant can only recover the direct and provable costs of the time spent preparing the claim in a legal capacity, not any administration costs allegedly incurred by already remunerated administrative staff.

23. The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4 (POFA) 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 that their artificially inflated claim, as pleaded, constitutes double recovery.

24. 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 earlier General Judgment or Orders of DJ Grand, who (when sitting at the Newport (IOW) County Court in 2018 and 2019) has struck out several parking firms claims. These include a BPA member serial Claimant (Britannia, using BW Legal's robo-claim model) and an IPC member serial Claimant (UKCPM, using Gladstones' robo-claim model) yet the Orders have been identical in striking out both claims without a hearing, with the Judge stating: ''It is ordered that The claim is struck out as an abuse of process (Exhibit HC21). 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...''

25. 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 (Vehicle Control Services Ltd v Davies Exhibit HC22) on 4th September 2019, District Judge Jones-Evans stated:

''Upon it being recorded that Distract 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.''

26. In summary, the Claimant's particulars disclose no legal basis for the sum claimed and it is the Defendant's position that the poorly pleaded claim discloses no cause of action and no liability in law for any sum at all. The Claimant's vexatious conduct from the outset has been intimidating, misleading and indeed untrue in terms of the added costs alleged and the statements made, in trying to justify the unjustifiable.

27. There are several options available within the Courts' case management powers to prevent vexatious litigants pursuing a wide range of individuals for matters which are near-identical, with meritless claims and artificially inflated costs. The Defendant is of the view that private parking firms operate as vexatious litigants and that relief from sanctions should be refused.

Distinguishing cases mentioned by the Claimants witness statement and addressing individual points.

28. Yasmeen Courser, representing the Claimant, has been employed by the company since January 2018. As the alleged contravention took place in February 2015, none of the statements provided in her witness statement can be of her own knowledge. She is not aware of the alleged offence, the location, the signage or the facts in this case.

29. The Claimant wishes to rely on Thornton vs Shoe Lane Parking [1971] 2 QB 163 to attempt to try and prove individuals may enter into contracts with a sign. That case is fully distinguished from this case in question as that relates to a car park with a barrier on entry. The sign is clearly visible to motorists entering the car park and they are able to read the sign and decide whether they want to enter the car park while they take a ticket and wait for the barrier to open. In this case, there is no barrier so the case above has no relevance on this case.

30. In Paragraph 37 of the Claimants Witness Statement, the Claimant refers to ‘Vine v Waltham Forest’. The Court of Appeal on this case ruled in favour of the Defendant on the basis that a person cannot be presumed bound by terms and conditions on signage that they haven’t seen. It would appear that the Claimant is attempting to wrongfully persuade the court by mis-quoting Roch L.J. The full quote is this;

“Alternatively, and this is the ground principally urged upon us by Mr. Mott, the question whether a person voluntarily assumes a risk or consents to trespass to his or her property is to be judge objectively and not subjectively. Once it is established that sufficient and adequate warning notices were in place, a car driver cannot be heard to say that he or she did not see the notice. Were that to be the law, it would be too easy for car drivers who trespass with their cars to evade the only method landowners have of stopping the unauthorised parking of cars in parking spaces or parking areas on their property.”

31. As you can see, Lord Justice Roch was simply reading one side of the argument. Roch L.J. found in favour of the motorist in this case. Therefore, this case can be immediately dismissed as it has no bearing on this case in question.

32. Paragraph 36 states the Claimant is intending to rely on the ParkingEye v Beavis case. This case can be fully distinguished from my case due to the following facts;

a. There was no contractual offer made giving a licence to park nor any promise made, or contract agreed based on any prominent signs or properly marked lines.
b. There is no comparable legitimate interest or commercial justification for charging more than the landowner could claim by way of restitutionary damages.

33. The claimant is intending to rely on Chaplair v Kumari to attempt to justify an unknown £60 “debt recovery charge”. This case is distinguished from the case above by the following facts; the Beavis case established that a parking firm cannot seek or plead a sum in 'damages'. Chaplair v Kumari is also distinguished. Far from supporting this attempt at double recovery, Chaplair was a decision about contractual fees set in lease terms, whereas parking charges are capped by the Protections of Freedoms Act (the POFA)/the will of Parliament at the sum on any Notice to Keeper, and not higher, and the Beavis case confirmed this by only allowing £85 and no bolt on 'damages' or imaginary debt collector costs.
34. In summary, I believe the Claimants claim should be dismissed for the following reasons:
a. I had a valid parking permit in my car on the day of the incident. The Claimant has confirmed this themselves by including the copy of my email to them on the 2nd of February 2015.
b. The Claimants photos clearly show the car in question was not parked within a marked bay, and as such cannot be claimed to be within the areas the claimant claims to administer on behalf of Places for People.
c. The Claimant is not able to provide a contract between themselves and Places for People for the date of the incident. Therefore the validity of the claimants entire claim is questionable.

The Court is invited to dismiss the claim and to award my costs of dealing with this claim and 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: XXXXXXX
Date: XX/XX/XXXX

KeithP

You told us six days ago that you had received the Claimant's Witness Statement.

When is the filing and serving of your Witness Statement and evidence due?

Someone_new

By the 28th. VCS have their office not far from mine. Do I have to send them a copy in the post, can I not serve it to them in person?