UK Car Park Management/Gladstones Court claim

D_P_Dance

. We are contemplating getting help with this and I have contacted the individual in question. Can you please advise how good this person

If you are talking about Bargepole, (DC),   he has represented me in court, (nor a parking matter),  we won.  

Ladybird150

I think we are talking about the same person as the initials match. Congrats on wining your case.We have put our potential claim on hold for the moment to see how this one will pan out. My husband is not too keen to go to court  but hopefully if we win this one, he might change his mind. 

Ladybird150

I have amended the heading of my thread as it is no longer relevant.

D_P_Dance

There is nothing to congratulate me about.  The judge refused to grant me unreasonable behaviour costs, and I ended up £200 out of pocket

Ladybird150

D_P_Dance said:

There is nothing to congratulate me about.  The judge refused to grant me unreasonable behaviour costs, and I ended up £200 out of pocket

That was not the great outcome if you were £200 out of pocket. At least you won and gained knowledge how to beat these idiots in the court.

Ladybird150

I've spent hours and hours researching and have produced my draft WS. I would appreciate any comments and suggestions you might have. Thank you all in advance. Your help is much appreciated.

In the XXX County Court

 

Claim No: XXX

 

Between

 

UK CAR PARK MANAGEMENT LIMITED (Claimant)

-and- 

Mr XXX XXX (Defendant) 

__________________

Witness Statement

_______________

 

1. I, NAME, of ADDRESS, the Defendant in this matter. Any documentary evidence to my witness statement will be referred to as Exhibit A01, A02 and so on.

2. The Claimant’s legal representative informed the Defendant that their assumption is that the Claimant’s witness will not attend the hearing, presenting a significant disadvantage for the Defendant. If the Claimant’s witness does not attend the court hearing to give evidence, the Defendant will be unable to question the witness for the statement’s validity.

3. The Defendant was the registered keeper of the vehicle in question, registration number, XXX. However, at the material time, the Defendant was not the driver of vehicle, which was insured and authorized for use by different drivers. Please see Exhibit A01, the vehicle insurance document listing the names of the insured drivers.

4. On the date in question the Defendant was not at his place of work, where the matter in question occurred. The Defendant was out with his children as it was half term. Please see Exhibit A02 which is the statement from the Claimant’s spouse confirming that the Claimant was with his family on the date in question.

 

PARKING ENFORCEMENT – INVALID CONTRACTUAL AGREEMENT

5. Paragraph 27 of Claimant’s witness statement, refers to an agreement with the landowner which gave the Claimant authority to enforce parking charges. The Authorisation Form between the Defendant and the Landowner wrongly refers to the Landowner as a Managing Agent. Even though the Claimant has redacted the signature of the individuals who signed the Authorisation Form, it is clear that this was not signed in person but electronically.

 

6. The signatures do not meet the strict requirements of Section 44 of The Companies Act 2006. This states that for a contract to be executed, it must be signed by two authorised signatories, or by a director and a witness, from both parties.

 

7. Since there is only one signature from each party, and neither are identified as being authorised to sign on behalf of their respective companies in accordance with the act, the contract fails to have been properly executed.

8. In addition, only one party (referred to as Contractor) dated the contract, whereas the second signatory did not date the contract.  

 

9. The Claimant attached to their witness statement a Site Plan which shows the boundaries of their enforcement area. The Property Register Title Number in question - XXX and some of the parking area which the Claimant was managing does not form part of this Property Register as it was removed from this title in 1995 and registered under a title number XXX which is owned by another party. Please see a copy of the Title Register with site plan XXX as Exhibit A03.

 

10. Page 2, paragraph 4 of the Title Property Register XXX states the following …the land edged and numbered in green on the title plan has been removed from this title and registered under the title number or numbers shown in green on the said plan.

 

11.Page 4 Paragraph 8 it further states  …(22.12.1995) A Transfer of the land edged and numbered XXX in green on the title plan dated 15 November 1995 made between NAME… Paragraph  9 states … …(22.12.1995) Each of the Car parking spaces numbered on the title plan as shown in the column 1 below is subject to the exclusive right of user granted by the transfer of the part edged green on the filed plan…

 

12. The Defendant believes that the Claimant does not have written authority from the second landowner (NAME) of Title Number XXX to act on their behalf as no evidence of such authority has been supplied by the Claimant. This is a requirement set out by the Claimant’s trade body, the International Parking Community (IPC), in clause 1.1 of the IPC Code of Practice.

 

NO NOTICE TO DRIVER

 

13. The Claimant alleges that a Notice to Driver was placed on the windscreen of the vehicle, and has provided photographic evidence of same. The Defendant was unaware of any such notice, and strongly suspects that this was an instance of what is known as ‘ghost ticketing’, whereby a parking company operative places a notice on a windscreen, photographs it, and then removes it. The Defendant only became aware of alleged parking charge when a letter was received from an unlicensed ‘Debt collect, Debt Recovery Plus on behalf of the Claimant dated 20th April 2018, two months after the alleged matter occurred. The Defendant immediately wrote to UK Car Park Management on 23rd April to query the alleged parking charge. See attached Exhibit No A04.

 

14. The Claimant responded to the Defendant’s letter on 14th May 2018, producing a copy of a letter which was allegedly sent to the Defendant on 19th March 2018. The Defendant did not receive this letter and suspects it was never sent but produced additionally by the Claimant after 14th May 2018. Please see Exhibit No A05.

 

15. The Claimant Company is known to use illegal and unfair practices when operating. As an example and proof please see Exhibit No A06 which is a parking charge notice issued by the Claimant to a vehicle which was inside the Defendant’s car repair garage on the same estate. The premises are a private property and the Claimant had no authorisation to take pictures of the property or vehicles inside a private property. The Claimant sent a parking charge to Defendant’s customer’s home and in turn the Defendant lost the customer and business. The Defendant had to write many angry letters to the Claimant to get this illegal parking charge cancelled which in the end was cancelled. Please see Exhibit A07.

 

UNCLEAR AND CONFUSING SIGNAGE

 

16. The Claimant’s signage on the land in question is confusing, unclear and prohibitive.

 

17. Upon entering the ADDRESS at XXX, on the right hand side there were signs which the Claimant placed above another Company’s signs which stated …FOR USE BY NAME OF COMPANY VISITORS ONLY…. It would have been impossible for any motorist to decide which sign was in operation at the material time, the Claimant’s signs or the signs by COMPANY NAME. See attached Exhibits A08 and A09.

 

18. The Claimant’s signage states, as one of the terms, ‘YOU MUST PARK WHOLLY WITHIN A MARKED BAY’, and goes on to assert that drivers parking otherwise than in accordance with the terms, contractually agree to pay a parking charge of £100. There were no marked bays in the area which can be seen from Exhibit A06 and the only marked bays that were available belonged to a Title Number XXX for which the Claimant have not produced any proof of authorization to manage.

 

19. It is therefore denied that the Claimant’s signage is capable of creating a legally binding contract.

 

CLAIMANTS UNRESAONABLE BEHAVIOUR

 

20. The claimant has behaved unreasonably in bringing this case against the Defendant to the court. Their Claimant’s actions and the actions of their legal representatives have brought the Defendant considerable vexation and distress. As a litigant-in-person the Defendant has had to learn relevant law from the ground up and spent a considerable time researching case law to prepare the defence and this witness statement. The Defendant has no intention of claiming for each and every one of the hours spent on dealing with this claim, but will be asking for a consideration to cover some of the time spent as detailed in the costs schedule.

 

THE CLAIMANT’S WITNESS

 

21. The witness statement appears to not actually be signed by Mr Jack Chapman, and the Defendant is in the process of making a formal complaint to the Solicitors Regulation Authority (SRA) having come across through research a similar UKCPM case where this exact same UKCPM 'electronic signature' was exposed by a lay representative a few months ago, to be a facsimile and that UKCPM could not have signed the statement on the date stated under the facsimile signature, or at all.

 

22.   In the two cases in October, Claim Nos. E9GF9M7K and E4GF8M1R, UKCPM -v- Mrs A, before Deputy District Judge Chohan at High Wycombe statements purported to have been signed by 'Jack Chapman', an employee of the Claimant company, could not have been. A comparison of the signatures on these two statements showed that the signatures are 100% identical in every respect, down to the last pixel. It was highly improbable, if not impossible, that any person would sign his name twice in a completely identical manner on two separate occasions, three months apart. The same signature in this case too. 

 

23.   The complaint to the SRA continued: The only possible conclusion to be drawn from this, is that Gladstones have copied, traced, or otherwise forged Mr Chapman's signature, and that in fact Mr Chapman has never seen or signed these statements.

 

24.   The complaint, currently under investigation against Gladstones, suggested that the SRA needs to take urgent action on this matter, as it is more likely than not that this is an ongoing and regular practice.

 

25. In the case of UKCPM v Mrs A on 17th October, Deputy District Judge Chohan at High Wycombe struck out both conjoined claims. He also agreed that the two factors of late service, and a defective witness statement, crossed the threshold of unreasonable behaviour, and awarded Mrs A her full costs in the sum of £331.80, which he said was a very reasonable figure.

 

26. This case has the same facsimile signature from a person who was not a witness. It is a template statement and 'Jack' from UKCPM is most likely not going to be in court to be cross examined.

 

THE IDENTITY OF THE DRIVER

 

27. The Defendant refutes the many allegations by the Claimant in their witness statement that they were the driver at the material time either directly or by presumption. The Claimant has no evidence to the contrary and the accusations are merely ‘hear-say’ and conjecture; not a factual reciting of a witness who was present.

 

THE BURDEN OF PROOF

28. The Defendant has no obligation to prove that they were not the driver. The burden of proof is on the Claimant to prove that the Defendant was the driver.

29. Section 172 (2)(a) of the Road Traffic Act 1988 makes it clear that the registered keeper of a vehicle is required to furnish the police with the identity of the driver under statute: “(a) the person keeping the vehicle shall give such information as to the identity of the driver as he may be required to give by or on behalf of a chief officer of police…”

30. There is no such statute requiring the registered keeper to identify the driver of a parking charge on private land. In any event, the Defendant does not know the identity of the driver, only that they themselves were not driving.

31. Mr Henry Greenslade comments on this particular issue in the 2015 POPLA Annual Report:
“…a failure by the recipient of a notice issued under Schedule 4 [POFA 12] to name the driver, does not of itself mean that the recipient has accepted that they were the driver at the material time”.

32. The fact that compliant notices leverages statute, it is pertinent to apply his comments to non-compliant notices.

33. The Defendant has demonstrated to the Court that the burden of proof for identifying the driver should not lay with the Defendant.

 

ADDITIONAL COSTS – ABUSE OF PROCESS

 

34. The Claimant, or their legal representatives, has added an additional sum of £60 to the original £100 parking charge. The Defendant has reasonable belief that the Claimant has not incurred additional costs to pursue an alleged £100 debt. Any debt collection letters were a standard feature of a low cost business model and are already counted within the parking charge itself. The Protection of Freedoms Act, Schedule 4, Paragraph 4(5), states that the maximum sum which can be recovered is that specified in the Notice to Keeper, which is £100 in this instance.  It is submitted that this is an attempt of double recovery from the Claimant, which the Court shall not uphold.

 

35. If this claim is not summarily struck out for the same reasons as the Judges citied in the multiple Carnarfon (Exhibit  ), Southampton (Exhibit    ), Warwick (Exhibit   ) and Luton (Exhibit   ) County Court decisions, then due to this Claimant knowingly proceeding with a claim that amounts to an abuse of process, full costs will be sought by the Defendant at the hearing, such as are allowable pursuant to Civil Procedure Rule 27.14.

 

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.

KeithP

Para 4: Please see Exhibit A02 which is the statement from the Claimant’s spouse confirming that the Claimant... should be Please see Exhibit A02 which is the statement from the Defendant’s spouse confirming that the Defendant...


Para 5: The Authorisation Form between the Defendant and the Landowner... should be The Authorisation Form between the Claimant and the Landowner...

Check spelling, e.g. UNRESAONABLE.

Ladybird150

Thanks. I will change the spelling errors. 

Redx

bear in mind that the exhibits should be labelled as the defendants initials followed by a number , so not A01, A02 etc but STW/01 , STW/02 etc if the defendant is say S T Walton for example

Ladybird150

Redx said:

bear in mind that the exhibits should be labelled as the defendants initials followed by a number , so not A01, A02 etc but STW/01 , STW02 etc if the defendant is say S T Walton for example

Many thanks. I was not aware of this.I will label with my husband's initials.