CPM parking charge - 3 tickets

JEK

Appreciate it, here is what I have written.

1. I am xxxx, the defendant. Firstly I would like to apologise for the delay in providing my evidence and statement. I received the order mid March right at the start of the lockdown pandemic, this has caused me a great deal of distress and anxiety. I have had to manage my heavily pregnant partner and an extremely high risk mother. I honestly thought the deadline was no later than 14 days before the hearing. I would like to apologise to the court and state I don’t believe the Claimant has been disadvantaged, as nothing I am submitting is news to them. 

1. At the time I worked for xxxxx in an administrative role and the PCN was issued in the car park at our office which was inside xxxx. The car park was used free of charge every day for the whole time I spent working there. Each day upon arriving at work, I would park up and go to the concierge. They would then issue a parking permit for me to display on the dash. 

1. As I understand it the car park is a communal one shared by several businesses and flat visitors. The car park flows in one direction with 1 entrance and exit, it is fairly well kept however it is missing some road markings. I had parked the vehicle in the car park causing no obstruction to any person or vehicle. It is not specified that the area is not permitted for parking as there are no road markings or instructions anywhere. You will also find a picture of the property management parking in the same spot (see AT/01). 

1. There are two signs displayed in the car park; 

The first is “Permit Holders Only” (see AT/02) which only states that  ‘Permits must be clearly displayed on dashboard/windscreen’ - Which it was, therefore I am authorised to be in the car park as a permit has been issued.

1. The other “No Parking At Anytime” (see AT/03) states “You the driver accept liability to pay the parking charge for any failure to comply with the terms and conditions contact within this sign”. The only information it states is no parking at any time, this is extremely unclear and there are no instructions or guidelines to where one can or cannot park. If there was an issue with either where or how I parked both the signage and the concierge have never made it clear.
   
   

2. I must stress that in the claimant's witness statement the evidence of signage they have provided is incorrect and does not represent what is displayed at the car park. The terms and conditions they have set out within the witness statement are new to me and have never been communicated previously. Please see updated T&C’s below and compare with the actual signage attached.

The Terms and conditions of the contractual licence by which users may use the private site include the following:

11.1 Permit Holders Only:

11.1.1 Only park in a numbered bay stated on your permit;

AND 

11.1.2 Permits must be clearly displayed on dashboard/windscreen

11.2 No parking on roadway at any time. 

1. It is denied that the claimant's signage sets out the terms in a sufficiently clear manner which would be capable of binding any reasonable person reading them. They merely state that vehicles must clearly display a permit and no parking at any time. Neither giving any definition, nor indicating where vehicles can or cannot park or what is a valid or invalid permit. In addition there are no road markings such as yellow lines to suggest parking is not allowed. Please see AT/06, this is an example of how the signage should be displayed and explained with clear examples of where parking is permitted.

1.  As soon as I received the parking charge an appeal was made requesting evidence for the claim. Weeks later the defendant received a response (see AT/04) rejecting the appeal that included no evidence and was a simple template. This made me wonder whether the company is legitimate and also gave me no faith in their appeals process and so I decided to no longer pursue. 

1. In my defence I stated that I can provide multiple witness statements from colleagues as the parking attendant has verbally agreed that the area in question was suitable for parking. Unfortunately due to Covid-19 It’s been difficult to communicate and meet with my colleagues to get a signature.
   
   

2. 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 (see AT/05).
   
   

Statement of Truth

I believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true. I understand that proceedings for contempt of court may be brought against anyone who makes, or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth.

JEK

I have also included in the attachments - the Supplmentary statement, VCS claims struck out abuse of process, UKCPM v Esplande, Sched 2 consumer rights act and Britannia v crosby, 

Coupon-mad

1. Please see below the version that the Claimant is wrongly stating appeared at the site on the material date,  updated T&C’s below and compare with the actual signage attached.  I invite the court to find that teh Claimant has acted unreasonably and is either by intent or negligence, misleading the court and myself, an unrepresented consumer:
   ''The Terms and conditions of the contractual licence by which users may use the private site include the following:
   11.1 Permit Holders Only:
   11.1.1 Only park in a numbered bay stated on your permit;
   AND 
   11.1.2 Permits must be clearly displayed on dashboard/windscreen
   11.2 No parking on roadway at any time.'' 

I'd suggest the above, if you are saying they are incorrect about the signs (what photos have they appended?). They can't have made it up...can they...surely the pics must show what they are claiming the signs say?!

I assume your numbering is right on your actual version?

What about your supplementary WS with the Southampton case and talking about the abuse of process?

What about your Summary Costs Assessment, signed and dated, breaking down your hours at £19 per hr?

Have you done both of them by copying from the threads by @keypulse and @Chefdave ?

1505grandad

The para numbers are all over the place - is it the forum formatting?

Are you including a Summary Costs Assessment?

JEK

They have attached photos of signs with no borders / background as if they are found on the internet, completely different, branded with cpms in a nearly all white background versus the white and blue found in the car park.
I have added this line too - You can see in the background of many pictures provided by both parties that the signs have bold blue lines.  
Yes the numbering is correct on the WS.
The supplementary WS do i need to mention this in the WS? I have just copied and pasted into a new doc from Chefdave.
Summary costs at £19 ph I copied from a file linked on Newbies thread by Chefdave

JEK

What do you think? are we good to go?

Coupon-mad

The supplementary WS do I need to mention this in the WS?

Yes, I would end your main WS with something like this, with 'x' being your paragraph numbers and xx the last exhibit number:

Unreasonable conduct and abuse of process

x.  Appended to this main witness statement is a supplementary witness statement covering the wholly objectionable conduct of parking firms such as this one, disingenuously seeking to inflate their claims by 60%.  This, when taken together with this Claimant's barrage of pre-action intimidating demands and post-claim 'witness statement' with a facsimile signature (a matter that is currently the subject of an investigation against Gladstones solicitors by the SRA and is a template, issued in terrorem of Defendants rather than as a document to assist the court with any facts) seems to me to amount to harassment.   

x.  In Harrison v Link Financial Ltd [2011] EWHC B3 (Mercantile) [https://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Mercantile/2011/B3.html] HHJ Chambers QC concluded at [83]: ''Cumulatively and damningly is what I find to be the way that MBNA and the Defendant went about recovering their debt. [...] It seems to me that such conduct has no proper function in the recovery of consumer debt. Whatever the strength of the suggestion that the courts should only be a last resort, I can see no legitimate comparison between a series of measured warnings which, after full opportunity for response, lead to legal proceedings and what took place. {...there} ...can be no excuse for conduct of which it must be supposed the sole purpose must have been to make the Claimant's life so difficult that he would come to heel. I cannot think that in a society that is otherwise so sensitive of a consumer's position this is conduct that should countenanced.''

x.  Harassment or not, I invite the court to find that it is an abuse of process for a Claimant to issue a knowingly inflated claim for a sum which it is not entitled to recover.  This matter was recently determined by District Judge Grand, sitting at Southampton County Court, where multiple PCN claims had previously been struck out, and the Claimants applied to have the Order set aside. The District Judge dismissed the application, and a copy of his Approved Judgment is appended to this document at exhibit xx (Britannia Parking v Crosby: Approved Judgment  -11 November 2019).    The inflated sum is a poor attempt to go behind the Supreme Court ruling in ParkingEye -v- Beavis; and the extra £60 charge is not damages at all and is not on the signs (if it is, the text is positively hidden).  It is an Unfair Term, pursuant to Schedule 2 of the CRA, where s71(2) creates a duty on the Court to consider the fairness of any consumer contract (terms, and consumer notices).   In this situation it ought not to be left to hardy individuals to have to raise this repeated behaviour at the relatively few parking firm cases that reach a hearing, whilst most beleaguered consumers no doubt just pay on sight of the misleading letters and/or a court claim.   

 

x. For any or all of the reasons stated above, the Court is invited to dismiss this claim as entirely without merit and to award the Defendant’s full costs (my Summary Costs Assessment is appended herewith) due to this Claimant’s unreasonable behaviour, pursuant to Civil Procedure Rule 27.14(2)(g).

 

Statement of Truth
I believe that the facts stated in this witness statement are true.  I understand that proceedings for contempt of court may be brought against anyone who makes, or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth.

Coupon-mad

It's not meant to be blue - change it to black!  I took some quotes from another one I had stored.

nosferatu1001

Quick query OP - did you get he claimants Documents by 31.03? If no, and you still dont have them (for example) ,then they would be foolish in the extreme to complain. Firstly, unlike YOU they suffer no disadvantage from late service, and secondly because they broke the same order, the usual sanction would be to disallow the docuemtns if one side complains, and as they must prove their claim *first*, without any documents they cannot prove anything as they have. no. proof. ! So try not to panic.

As above, a covering letter explaining about lockdown should do. 

JEK

I sent my WS last week, exactly two weeks before the hearing. Today I have just had a letter that says the hearing is vacated and the judge has reviewed the evidence on the 4th of June. Basically saying I have not submitted any evidence and the everything the claimant has stated is clear. What do i do??? the letter is so dam vague and I have no idea on how to proceed! any help would be greatly appreciated. 
I didnt get any response back from sending my WS and i feel all lines of communication with the court just aren't working.