Help with CEL witness statement

Redx

pages that are relevant especially those quoted from, not all the act

read through this successful claim by caspar

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5995545/county-court-claim-form-from-excel-parking-services/p7

and this one

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6037246/horizon-parking-court-claim/p7

And this one

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5945126/one-parking-solution-visitors-space-pcn/p9

plenty of advice in them including a court video, the summary costs assessment and advice on the WS and exhibits and exhibits numbering too, plenty to read and digest, layout and topics, additional exhibits like the summary costs assessment etc

Le_Kirk

10. I received a penalty charge notice sometime after that, I complained to CEL who advised me to appeal to POPLA with not much information supplied to me by them, the appeal was rejected.

Was it really a Penalty Charge Notice or a Parking Charge Notice?

ahmedadam1982

Le_Kirk said:

10. I received a penalty charge notice sometime after that, I complained to CEL who advised me to appeal to POPLA with not much information supplied to me by them, the appeal was rejected.

Was it really a Penalty Charge Notice or a Parking Charge Notice?

Hi I meant Parking charge 

Redx

So change any word Penalty to Parking , be precise , say what you see , check the meanings and inference of your words , remember that a judge will be seeing your submissions , not twitter

You are making a witness statement of truth , so keep it to the truth , call a spade a spade , not a shovel or a spoon or a digging implement

ahmedadam1982

IN THE COUNTY COURT AT NEWCASTLE Cf & T CENTRE

CLAIM NO 

 

BETWEEN

 

CIVIL ENFORCEMENT LIMITED - CLAIMANT

VS

 

Exhibits:

Ex1: Dental examination sheet

Ex2: Receipt of payment

Ex3: Card payment receipt

Ex4: Dental practice manager email response to my complaint

Ex5: Parking conditions sign

Ex6: Consumer Rights Act 2015

Ex7: Car parking signs map

Ex8: Particulars of claim and schedule of information

Ex9: British Parking association Code of Practice

Ex10: Confirmation of Authority

1. I xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (the Defendant in this matter).

2. I am an unrepresented consumer who has never attended the County Court before,

3. I deny any liability for the alleged breach of Terms and Conditions with the Claimant.

4. The details of the breach of contract that occurred are unclear. I am yet to see a copy of the terms and conditions and any evidence that these were in fact clearly on display at the time of the alleged incident.

5. I was a patient who attended My Dentist dental practice at Martonside way in Middlesbrough on the day of the alleged incident 12/10/2018; I attended an emergency appointment having not slept well for few days because of a broken tooth. The dental practice has not included any information beforehand in writing or an email regarding the car park restrictions.

6. As there was no written information, I tried to call the dental practice between 1 pm on the 12th of October 2018 and 2pm of the same day to verify my appointment. I received no response and there was no automatic answer machine on their line. I made the decision to go by myself upon entering the site I haven’t seen any clear signs and I recall that the weather was cloudy and rainy; I found the practice doors closed and I was informed by a passer-by that this will be the case between 1 and 2 pm.

7. I waited until 2 pm and when the practice opened its door, they informed me that my appointment was at 14:15, I attended my appointment, took sometime to recover from the procedure which I had done and returned home.

8. I have not seen any signs in the practice and no member of staff alerted me to the parking restrictions or the need to register for extra time in the car park.

9. I paid the practice for their services and included a copy of the receipts (Ex 2 and Ex3)    and a copy of my dental assessment sheet (Ex1)

10. I received a Parking charge notice sometime after that, I complained to Civil Enforcement Limited as I genuinely believed this to be a simple mistake. CEL advised me to appeal to POPLA with not much information supplied to me by them, the appeal was rejected.

11. CEL didn’t inform me of the ability of the dental practice to cancel parking tickets for their patients should they wish, a new piece of information which I read in their witness statement. This is a clear and deliberate act of misleading myself during the appeal process and misleading the court to believe that I had not been a patient at the dental practice henceforth my ticket wasn’t cancelled.

12. I complained to the dental practice and their response included a statement that they don’t have the right to cancel any tickets, which lay out the question about the integrity of CEL.

13. I would like to mention that I am led to believe that the registration for extra time is free, I don’t think  failure to obtain a registration at the practice makes me liable for this penalty charge, you can refer to the documents confirming my attendance for treatment at the practice on the day of the alleged incident Ex1,2,3.

14. I have not seen any evidence outlining the relationship between Mydentist at Martonside way and CEL. Presumably CEL run the car park for the interest of the dental practice and other businesses within the specified area. I would argue that my stay within the car park benefited the dental practice as I paid 21.6 pounds for this appointment Ex 2 and Ex3, hence I deny that any damage or loss has occurred.

15. My vehicle was in motion on both ANPR images however the Claimant has stated the breach of contract as Parked for longer than the maximum period permitted. The Claimant has not evidenced whether the permitted maximum free parking period of 60 minutes included time entering the site, looking for a space and parking, as well as exiting the car park. If the terms and conditions do state the parking period permitted is the full period of time spent within the car park and not the time the vehicle is parked then I question the prominence and clarity of this condition. I also find it unreasonable to assume that any driver would clearly understand the implications between whether entrance / exit time is included within the permitted parking period by the terminology used on the signage and contract that was displayed at the time, or if indeed they could be led to believe the time stated is merely the period of time a vehicle is parked upon the premises.

16. All the letters from the claimant in addition to the claim form fail to mention any grace periods allowed under the alleged contract which the defendant believe is a deliberate attempt to mislead the defendant and court about any estimated alleged damages and costs.

17. The Claimant states in their witness statement that the signage is clearly displayed but this is not agreed. Thus, the necessary elements of offer and acceptance to form a contract were not present.

18.The Defendant trusts that the presiding Judge will recognise this wholly unreasonable conduct as a gross abuse of process. It was held in the Supreme Court in Beavis (where £85 was claimed, and no more) that a private parking charge already includes a very significant and high percentage in profit and more than covers the costs or running an automated regime of template letters. Thus, there can be no ‘costs’ to pile on top of any parking charge claim Ex..

19. In addition to the original penalty of 100 pounds, the Claimant has artificially inflated the value of the Claim by adding purported legal costs and interest 259.2 pounds, which have not actually been incurred by the Claimant. Civil Enforcement LTD have not expended any such sum in this case, given that they have a Legal Team with salaried in-house Solicitors and this firm whose main business is supposed to be parking ‘management’ as a service provision, files many thousands of similar ‘cut and paste’ robo-claims per annum. No genuine legal costs arise, per case and their in-house Solicitors cannot possibly be believed to be paid in the millions per annum for their service.

 

21.  The added ‘legal’ cost is in fact an artificially invented figure, which represents a cynical attempt to circumvent the Small Claims costs rules and achieve a double recovery. According to Ladak v DRC Locums UKEAT/0488/13/LA, a Claimant can only recover the direct and provable costs of the time spent by legally qualified staff on actually preparing the claim and/or the cost of obtaining advice for that specific claim, in a legal capacity Ex…..

 

22.  Alleging that the letters the parking firm sent have caused an additional loss is simply untrue. The standard wording for parking charge/debt recovery contracts is/was ''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 they used a third-party debt collector during the process.

 

 

23.  This case is fully distinguished in all respects from ParkingEye LTD v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67. That Supreme Court decision sets a high bar for parking firms, not a blanket precedent, and the Beavis case essentially turned on a ‘complex’ and compelling legitimate interest and very clear notices, where the terms were held not to involve any lack of good faith or ‘concealed pitfall or trap’.

 

24.  This parking charge is not valid, as the registered keeper has been invoiced for time it took the vehicle to enter and exit the carpark. The ANPR does not record how long the vehicle was parked for, and therefore cannot issue a charge for overstaying the parking limit.

 

25.   No standing - this distinguishes this case from the Beavis case:    

 

26.  As an agent, the Claimant has no legal right to bring such a claim in their name which should be in the name of the landowner.

27.  I refer here to the CRA 2015: Ex….

Consumer contract termis which may be considered unfair:

A term which has the object or effect of irrevocably binding the consumer to terms with which the consumer has had no real opportunity of becoming acquainted before the conclusion of the contract.

A term which has the object or effect of excluding or hindering the consumer’s right to take legal action or exercise any other legal remedy, in particular by—

(a)requiring the consumer to take disputes exclusively to arbitration not covered by legal provisions,

(b)unduly restricting the evidence available to the consumer, or

(c)imposing on the consumer a burden of proof which, according to the applicable law, should lie with another party to the contract.

 

27. Paragraph 7 of the BPA code of practice, (exhibit …), highlighting that should the operator wish to take legal action on any outstanding parking charges, they must ensure that they have the written authority of the landowner (or their appointed agent) prior to legal action being taken, highlighting that the written authorisation must also set out:
a)the definition of the land on which you may operate, so that the boundaries of the land can be clearly defined

b)any conditions or restrictions on parking control and enforcement operations, including any restrictions on hours of operation

c) any conditions or restrictions on the types of vehicles that may, or may not, be subject to parking control and enforcement

d) who has the responsibility for putting up and maintaining signs

e)the definition of the services provided by each party to the agreement.
This has still not been provided to the defendant. The defendant questions the legitimacy of the parking charge as the absence of the above terms would state that no contract has been breached and therefore the defendant has not entered in to any contractual agreement with the claimant

 

28. Ex 5 shows the sign supplied by CEL where there it reads ‘’ if you need to park for a bit longer please obtain a permit inside the premises’’. Firstly there is no clarity of what a bit longer means, secondly there is no clarity of what are the premises refer to as there are more than one business in the area, in addition to that the 100 pounds charge is written in small barely noticeable font. I would argue that this doesn’t fulfil the requirement as set by BOPA code of practice Ex…

12. In summary, the Claimant's particulars of claim 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, harassing and indeed untrue in terms of the added costs alleged and the statements made.

13. The Defendant is of the view that this Claimant knew or should have known that to claim in excess of £100 for a parking charge on private land is disallowed under the CPRs, the Beavis case, the POFA and the CRA 2015, and that relief from sanctions should be refused.

 

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

 

I also wanted to check if a submission to CEL on Friday for a Monday Deadline is OK

Coupon-mad

Remove #19 and #21.

#28 has a typo, 'BOPA' instead of BPA.

Your have very odd numbers #12 and #13 at the end...

You don't need to print out the whole BPA CoP, just a page or two from it.

You have two #27 but the first one quotes an irrelevant part of the CRA that was not used in any recent cases.    You need to refer to the CRA only at Schedule2 (the grey list of unfair terms) paras 6, 10, 14 and 18.

1505grandad

Paras 13 and 19 you are using the word "penalty" 

D_P_Dance

Nine times out of ten these tickets are scams, so consider complaining to your MP, it can cause the scammer extra costs and work, and has been known to get the charge cancelled.

Parliament is well aware of the MO of these private parking companies, many of whom are former clampers, 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.