VCS Court claim without LBC

mjg79

Thanks waamo for the link - I'll read up about it. I am going to write the SAR letter to VCS so will also ask for evidence they sent me a letter before claim and make clear I'm going to bring up the case in any court hearing and see if that makes them pause. I doubt it but will try.

nosferatu1001 - I am sure you're right frankly they will just push on. I've been reading more and it's pretty clear their whole approach they take is a rather cyclical method of using court bureaucracy to put fear into their victims and cause inconvenience so they just pay up their demands... so I suppose from their point of view they might as well just plough on hoping I will crack under the pressure. What an appalling misuse of our legal system that should be there to redress genuine loss - I look forward to the day these crooks are put out of business.

mjg79

nosferatu1001 - yes bylaws apply on the land I believe. At the time in 2015 I downloaded a pdf showing the details of it all from 2004 and thankfully still have it. I believe at the time someone on here thought it might help with the kangaroo court appeal process but of course it didn't.

A quick search on google now doesn't quickly find the pdf but I still have it.

I am still reading up more about it but am I roughly right in thinking the application of bylaws is relevant insofar as challenging their claim that the roads are private land? I am beginning to realise there is a lot of legal arguments around what constitutes a public road. Or perhaps I have got that mixed up.

nosferatu1001

No, it is all about POFA
POFA only applies where the land has no stat control
This land has stat control, in the form of byelaws
As such, the keeper is NOT liable and they can only chase the driver. If they dont knowwho the driver is, thats tricky...

mjg79

Ok thank you for the response, that's very kind of you. I had read about that issue but hadn't tied the two parts together in my head. Gosh it is all complicated (at least to someone like me who struggles even with the type of language used on legal websites) so I really appreciate your help.

In my case from day one we have been very careful to never reveal the identity of the driver and the car is insured with multiple drivers.

mjg79

I thought I would give an update and see if anyone feels like casting an eye over the defence I have written up. I've actually been finding DSA quite receptive at the moment, following I must admit a rather stroppy email I sent them, to helping or at least they seem co-operative, far more so than they were in 2015/16. They agreed to contact VCS on my behalf a couple of weeks back and on Friday informed me that VCS have told them they will "place the case on hold for 7 days". I've no idea what that means and the deadline for me to submit my defence is 4pm Monday so I am going to email it this weekend.

Indeed reading some more threads I now see I should have sent it a few days ago to be sure. I will email it over the weekend then phone the court through Monday to push them to confirm they have received it. If anyone has any suggestions about anything else I should do to make sure there is no bureaucratic issue please let me know. I'll carefully follow the instructions in the Newbies thread ref printing/signing/emailing. I'm useless at legal stuff but quite good with scanning and pdfs etc.

Alas a part of my defence is that DSA was in a chaotic mess with signs the day I was there. This isn't actually something I've made up, they had taken down quite literally every sign for the car rentals as they were moving the parking area for rentals (I went back a few days later and saw all the new signs - signs actually that pointed to the wrong area and they had had to resort to putting a sticker over a box telling you to call them to get access to an unsigned car park - really chaotic). Anyway I've been trying to get them to give me the records of maintenance from that month in 2015 and kept hanging on hoping they would come up with it but they haven't so I've had to write my defence without.

During the past few weeks I didn't receive anything else from the Court or VCS/BWLegal or the Directions Questionnaire some speak of. I sent a SAR to both VCS (and also DVLA to find out under what grounds VCS got my data) but neither have yet responded. I believe they have a month so they till have a couple more weeks.

I'll copy and paste my defence in the next message. Thanks in advance if anyone does have the time to read it - I really know nothing about this area and have resorted to copying and pasting parts that seemed relevant and then trying to tailor them to my case.

mjg79

I am the Defendant, xx and reside at xx and it is admitted that I was the registered keeper of the vehicle registration xx on the day of this event(xx).

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


2. The identity of the driver is unknown. More than one person was insured to drive the car and regularly did so and more than one of the insured drivers was present on the day in question - none can remember who was driving as it was a short journey more than four years ago. The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (POFA) allows claims against a registered keeper but clearly states that this does not apply to land covered by byelaws. The land at DSA is covered by byelaws and as such, parking enforcement is a matter for the Magistrates Court, not the County Court. The Department for Transport's 2012 Guidance and explanatory notes about the POFA state:

''On what type of land does Schedule 4 apply? 4.1 The provisions in Schedule 4 are intended to apply only on private land in England and Wales. Public highways are excluded as well as any parking places on public land which are either provided or controlled by a local authority (or other government body). Any land which already has statutory controls in relation to the parking of vehicles (such as byelaws applying to airports, ports and some railway station car parks) is also excluded.’'


3. The airport byelaws (5(12) Parking of Vehicles) state that no person shall:

without reasonable excuse park a Vehicle elsewhere than in a place provided for that purpose.

In July 2015 DSA was in the process of moving the location of the car rental car parking area (car rental being the reason the Defendant’s car was being driven to the airport) and had removed all signs referring to said car park on the 6 July and failed to replace them thus causing the driver to become lost. The only safe course of action was to find an empty side road to pause momentarily, in order to plug in and turn on a satellite navigation system so as to avoid fumbling with it while driving and potentially causing a dangerous distraction. The photographs provided by the Claimant show the car paused for approximately 15 seconds. Pausing for such a short moment is not stopping or parking. The definition of parking was clarified in the appeal case Jopson v Home Guard Services, case number: B9GF0A9E - on 29.6.16 at Oxford County Court by Senior Circuit Judge, Charles Harris QC. The Judge drew a distinction between brief stopping for a “minor vicissitude” and parking, which he defined as more long-term.

This echoed the view of Lord Neuberger in Moncrieff and Another v Jamieson and Others: HL 17 Oct 2007: where in paragraph 123 Lord Neuberger held that to “park vehicles” was “to station them on a longer term basis” as opposed to “the coming and going of motor vehicles along the way...[including]...the right to turn round such vehicles, and to station such vehicles for the purpose of loading and unloading (people and goods)…"

The conduct in this case cannot be construed to be “parking” (stationed on a longer term basis) or “stopping” but was merely the normal action of coming and going while looking for a destination having quite reasonably become lost due to poor maintenance of signs.


4. The Claimant argues the road is “private land”. According to the Road Traffic Act 1988, s 192(1) a “road” means means any highway and any other road to which the public has access. For example a private occupation road leading to a farm, if at the time the public have access, is a road (Harrison v Hill!1932 SC 13). The roads at DSA are by that definition “roads”, and moreover roads at an airport governed by byelaws that concern in particular the rules of the roads with regard to driving and parking.


5. The terms and conditions upon entering these roads were not displayed in a way that allowed a driver to safely stop and read them in order to consent to a contract. Drivers unfamiliar with the area would need to take their concentration from the the road for a considerable length of time in order to read its terms and conditions. There was no space provided for a driver to stop and safely read the signs and thereby agree to any contract and there was no grace period to allow the driver to make a decision, thus no contract was entered in to.

Even if the signage did offer a licence to park at a price (rather than simply saying 'No Stopping' which would be forbidding wording which cannot also be painted as offering any contractual licence), it is averred that the font size is too small and the words too numerous to be safely read while driving from a roundabout in traffic. Indeed the only way such a 'no stopping' sign with various terms and conditions could be safely and legally read would be to stop.


6. Abuse of Process. The Defendant has the reasonable belief that the Claimant has not incurred £60 costs to pursue an alleged £100 debt. The Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 states that the maximum sum that may be recovered from the keeper is the charge stated on the Notice to Keeper, in this case £100. In Claim number F0DP201T on 10th June 2019, District Judge Taylor sitting at the County Court at Southampton struck out the claim 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 not with reference to the judgement in Parking Eye 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 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 similar parking firm claim.

Prior to the Claim Form being received the last communication on this matter was from B W Legal in May 2016, demanding £154 (£100 “parking charge” and £54 “initial legal fees”) with a threat that, if it was not paid within 14 days, they might claim £235.64 in Count Court. Throughout there has been a record of ambiguity from VCS as to the nature of the claim - the terms “parking charge”, “stopping” and “stopping (waiting/parking)” have all been used with sums ranging from £60 to £253.64 either demanded or threatened. The Claimant is not the landowner and suffered no loss, no contract was entered into and given the almost random nature of the financial demands and language employed it is hard to escape the conclusion that the Claimant is a vexatious claimant attempting to deceive the Defendant.


7. In summary, it is the Defendant's position that the claim discloses no cause of action and is without merit. Accordingly, the Court is invited to strike out the claim of its own initiative, using its case management powers pursuant to CPR 3.4.


8. Statement of Truth

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

Signed xx
Date xx