BW Legal - Notice of County Court Claim issued for £265.70

Umkomaas

Have a go yourself and see what you come up with.

Have the issues you allude to above been included in your already submitted Defence?

SWB

Umkomaas wrote: »

Have a go yourself and see what you come up with.

Have the issues you allude to above been included in your already submitted Defence?

'In what format would a registered keeper write the Witness Statement if he wasn't driving the car please?'

Redx

from the viewpoint of what they received , what they found out at the time and since, its your first person statement, it cannot state what happened if you were not a witness to events on the day, UNLESS you were an occupant of the vehicle


so if you WERE an occupant of the vehicle and first person witness to events , but not the driver, you say so, plus you say facts about the signs , lighting , whatever


the problem with some of the above is you are disputing stuff and making theories of your own without proof (without facts , hence the reply by beamerguy)


if you know they failed to comply with POFA , and can prove it , say so, and prove it with an Exhibit (evidence) , otherwise its mere hearsay (rinse and repeat with anything else)


lastly , read other witness statements on here, especially recent ones where the defendant won , see what they said, dozens and dozens of examples to read , plagiarise etc

SWB

Redx wrote: »

from the viewpoint of what they received , what they found out at the time and since, its your first person statement, it cannot state what happened if you were not a witness to events on the day, UNLESS you were an occupant of the vehicle


so if you WERE an occupant of the vehicle and first person witness to events , but not the driver, you say so, plus you say facts about the signs , lighting , whatever


the problem with some of the above is you are disputing stuff and making theories of your own without proof (without facts , hence the reply by beamerguy)


if you know they failed to comply with POFA , and can prove it , say so, and prove it with an Exhibit (evidence) , otherwise its mere hearsay (rinse and repeat with anything else)


lastly , read other witness statements on here, exspecially recent ones where the defendant won , see what they said, dozens and dozens of examples to read , plagiarise etc

Thanks Redx, I can prove the facts above, I am just struggling with how to write the Witness Statement. The registered keeper was not driving or in the car at the time so that's what I am struggling with. So the Witness Statement will just say 'I am the registered keeper and was not an occupant of the car at the time'?
My exhibits will prove the rest of the surrounding facts. Thanks

Redx

add nor driver either or words to that effect , spell it out, dont infer it, say so

but if you werent there, then anything you have been told about what happened is hearsay , whereas your WS is about what you DO know as in your own paperwork, your internet searches etc , your exhibits , facts that you uncovered , absolutes, not hearsay , -- so

POFA
CRA
BPA CoP
abuse of process

extra charges that are not allowed , etc

I still dont understand why you havent read any WS where they were not present either, use the forum search box

SWB

I still dont understand why you havent read any WS where they were not present either, use the forum search box

Going on to do that now
Thanks so much

KeithP

As well as Redx's points...

There is nothing to stop the RK visiting the car park, taking pictures of the signs and commenting on the abysmal quality of them.

There is nothing to stop the RK finding out who owns the land and proving to the court that the PPC has no right to pursue charges.

There is nothing to stop the RK demonstrating to the court that the Claimant has added spurious charges to the claim.

And of course an RK who was not driving needs to demonstrate to the court how the Claimant has failed to transfer the driver's liability to the keeper.

The list goes on...

As Redx has said there are hundreds of Witness Statements on here written from a 'keeper not driver' perspective.

SWB

KeithP wrote: »

As well as Redx's points...

There is nothing to stop the RK visiting the car park, taking pictures of the signs and commenting on the abysmal quality of them.
The supermarket has changed three times since the alleged parking offence and the signs are now very different. Google Maps shows two small signs at the time in the Car Park, one at the entrance saying 'read the machine'

There is nothing to stop the RK finding out who owns the land and proving to the court that the PPC has no right to pursue charges.
Complete. Previous POPLA dismissed due to contract between the land owner and PP not available/in place.

There is nothing to stop the RK demonstrating to the court that the Claimant has added spurious charges to the claim.
In notes waiting to be written up thanks to this forum

And of course an RK who was not driving needs to demonstrate to the court how the Claimant has failed to transfer the driver's liability to the keeper.
In notes waiting to be written up thanks to this forum

The list goes on...

As Redx has said there are hundreds of Witness Statements on here written from a 'keeper not driver' perspective.

Working my way through them, thanks

Coupon-mad

All registered keeper posters manage to write a WS. It is easy when you know how.

For example, here are two where they were not the driver and POFA was cited:

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6024795/vcs-issued-pcn-after-25-days-i-told-them-where-to-stick-it-now-dcb-legal-have-sent-me-an-lbc&page=3

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/76093342#Comment_76093342

Read their WS and right through to the end, and how they won in court and what they said when asked about who was driving.

SWB

Any Witness Statement feedback will be appreciated, many thanks

In the County Court at Swindon
Claim No.

Between
Premier Park Limited
and


Witness Statement

I am Swindon, the Defendant in this matter, I have 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.

In this Witness statement, the facts and matters stated are true and within my own knowledge.

Attached to this statement are a number of Exhibits marked Ex1 to Ex8 which I will refer in my Witness Statement.

The exhibits which the defendant intends to rely upon are as follows:

Ex. 1. Defence statement
Ex. 2. Protection of Freedoms Act, 2014, schedule 4 Paragraph 9.
Highlighted – Paragraph 9 re: timescales and wording and Paragraph 5 re: location.
Ex. 3 Excerpt from Barrister Henry Greenslade on ‘Keeper Liability’ POPLA annual report, 2015 (Driver not legally mandated to name driver)
Ex. 4. Image of entrance to Car Park previous to alleged incident (2013)
Ex. 5. Image Car Park entrance sign and Car Park signs post alleged incident (2016)
Ex. 6. Images of Car Park signage Close-up wording post alleged incident (2016)
Ex. 7. Extract from BPA’s Code of Practice regarding signs – Entrance signs, text sizing and exact wording requirements
Ex. 8. Parking sign by PrivateEye in Beavis case to demonstrate clear signage






The claim relates to a parking charge notice ('PCN') issued on 2015 for £100.

I assert that I am not liable to the Claimant for the sum claimed, nor any amount at all, for the following reasons.

On the date in question, 2015, I can confirm I was the registered keeper of the car in question, however I respectfully deny liability for any parking charge levied by the Claimant.

1. Whilst I was the Registered Keeper of the vehicle concerned, there is no evidence of the driver.

2. I deny being the driver at the time of the supposed event, and therefore put Premier Park to strict proof that any contract can exist between the Claimant and myself.

3. At the time the Parking Charge Notice (PCN) was issued, five people in the family were insured to drive this car and it is possible for any of these people to have been the driver, and I had no obligation to name any of them to a private parking firm. It remains the burden of the Claimant to prove their case against me.

4. If Premier Park Limited are reliant on POFA 2012 for keeper liability, they are legally obliged to comply with POFA 2012.
POFA Paragraph 9 determines that certain conditions are met regarding wording and timescales, these conditions were not met.
POFA Paragraph 5 states wording regarding the location on the Notice To Keeper which was also not adhered to. I therefore submit that Premier Park did not comply with POFA 2012 and therefore have no right to chase myself as the keeper.
Please see Ex. 3 which quotes Barrister Henry Greenslade on ‘Keeper Liability’ in the POPLA annual report 2015
I put it to the court that my details as Registered Keeper were unlawfully gained and I am not legally mandated to name the driver as these conditions were not met.

5. The signage at the car park is insufficient and does not form a contract. I have asked the Claimant to provide photographs of the entrance signs and the signs within the Car Park along with a map showing the location of every sign, nothing has been received. This Car Park changed from servicing three different Supermarkets over the years and from information I sourced on Google Maps, there are no clear entrance and interior signs either before or after the alleged offence (Exhibit 4 in November 2013 and Exhibit 5 and Exhibit 6 in August 2016) so I very much doubt there were clear and sufficient signs in 2015 and would once again, ask the Claimant to provide evidence to the contrary. There are minimal signs inside the car park (Ex. 5 in 2016). Too few signs, placed too high with small text making it extremely difficult to notice and read, once again, I ask the Claimant to provide evidence to the contrary. The sign sizes, text sizing and wording are all in breach of the BPA Code of Practice Appendix B (Exhibit 7). The parking charge is hidden within the small print, it is not a clear and prominent charge and was never 'bound to' have been seen, as in the ‘Beavis’ case. (Exhibit 8)

5. I am no more liable now than I was then, but this unwarranted harassment and baseless litigation has caused me significant alarm and distress, such that I intend to report Premier Park Ltd to the Information Commissioner for misuse of my data, obtained from the DVLA.

6. My DVLA data was supplied for the single strict purpose of enquiring who was driving, not for suing me in the hope I will not defend/will have lost the paperwork/will have moved house, all for what was apparently an unproven £100 charge, allegedly incurred by another party, if incurred at all.

7. There is no landowner contract nor legal standing to form contracts or charge drivers in this location. Premier Park Ltd are not the owners of this land and as such they cannot form a contract with the driver, I have previously asked Premier Park Ltd provide me with a full copy of their contract with the landowner which allows them to form such a contract. A witness statement as to the existence of such a contract is not sufficient. I have not received a copy of this Contract and I do not believe there is a contract with the landowner that gives Premier Park Ltd the legal standing to levy these charges nor pursue them in the courts in their own name as creditor. This was shown to be the case by District Judge McIlwaine in VCS v Ibbotson, Case No 1SE09849 16.5.2012 (transcript in the public domain). So as regards the strict requirements regarding the scope and wording of landowner contracts, Premier Park Ltd have breached the BPA Code of Practice section 7 (Exhibit 2) and failed to demonstrate their legal standing, which renders this charge unenforceable.

8. The Claimant has omitted to obtain Planning Permissions or Advertising Consent from North Wiltshire District Council and the present Landowner for the Signage or the ANPR Cameras. The North Wiltshire District Council Planning Register does not show any such applications in its planning history. This demonstrates there was no Planning Permission for signs, ANPR cameras or to run a business from this site.

9. Abuse of Process. Costs on the claim – disproportionate and ingenuous
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.
Whilst quantified costs can be considered on a standard basis, this Claimants purported costs are wholly disproportionate and do not stand up to scrutiny. 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.

The Parking Eye v Beavis case is the authority for recovery of the parking charge itself and no more, since that the 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. It is indisputable that the alleged ‘parking charge’ itself is a sum which the Supreme Court found is already inflated to more than comfortably cover the cost of all the letters.

It is trite law that non-existent and untrue ‘legal costs’ are also unrecoverable. Given that the fact that robo claim solicitors and parking firms process tens of thousands of claims handled by an admin team or paralegals, I aver that no solicitor is likely to have supervised this current batch of cut and paste claims. The court is invited to note that no named Solicitor has signed communications, in breach of Practice Direction 22 and rendering the statement of truth a nullity.

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.

The Protection of Freedom Act 2010, 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 of their artificially inflated claim, as pleased, constitutes double recovery.
Many informed County Court Judges have disallowed all added parking firms ‘costs’ in County courts, such as these cases, struck out in recent months without a hearing, due solely to the pretence of adding ‘damages’ blatantly made up out of this air.
(a) In Claim number F0DP163T on 11th July 2019, District Judge Grand sitting at the County Court at Southampton struck out an overly inflated (over the £100 maximum Trade Body and POFA 2012 ceiling) parking firm claim without a hearing for that reason
(b) In Claim number F0DP201T on 10th June 2019, District Judge Taylor echoed an earlier General Judgement or Order of DJ Grand, who on 21st February 2019 sitting at the Newport (IOW) County Court, had struck out a parking firm claim, These include a BPA member serial Claimant (Britannia using BW Legals robo-claim model) where the abuse is inherent in the business model.
(c) The Order was identical in striking out all such claims without a hearing, the Judgement for all three example cases stated:
''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 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 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...''
In summary, the Claimants particulars disclose no legal basis for the sum claimed and it is my position that the poorly pleaded claim discloses no cause of action and no liability in law for any sum at all. The Claimants vexatious conduct from the outset has been intimidating and misleading in terms of the added costs alleged.
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. I believe these sorts of claimants should be refused.
The Court is invited to make an Order of its own initiative, dismissing this claim in ots entirety and to allow my costs under Civil Procedure Rule 27.14 on the indemnity basis, taking judicial note of the wholly unreasonable conduct of this Claimant, not least due t the abuse of process in repeatedly attempting to claim fanciful costs which they are not entitled to recover


Cost breakdown is now:
Parking Charge £100
Debt Recovery Charge £60 (was originally £50 and changed at a later date???)
Interest £30.70
Court fee £25
Legal Representative costs £50
Total costs now are £265.70


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




(Defendant)