Defence - Countrywide Parking Management & BW Legal

jrhys

I've now seen that one of the links I posted to a 'redacted' WS contained some personal information when the text was selected. If anyone has downloaded that for personal use, please delete it.

For anyone who has been pointed here for my WS (which now does reference contractual landholder authority) see the generic example (below) instead. It is best downloaded and edited in MS Word (Google docs doesn't quuiitttee do the job on the formatting; no idea about OpenOffice etc.).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10_T0OSPwcewp5MrODOIvxFOa1GSKa7Oz/view?usp=sharing 

Coupon-mad

Nice, that should be the new WS example in the NEWBIES thread, instead of Robert Cox's one now, but the NEWBIES thread is closed and I am busy working, so can't change it just yet.

jyom

@jrhys Have you had the hearing yet? If you have, happy to share the outcome?

jrhys

@jyom I've not had the hearing yet. It is on 28th June. Had a fair bit going on such that I've not spent any time really running through stuff so will need to get back on it next week to refresh myself and write up a crib sheet and stuff. 

I'm glad I got confirmation that, as requested, it was going to be a proper hearing and not just on the papers; although it could've been made a lot clearer by the courts and led me to misinterpret (and so miss) the WS deadline.

jrhys

Just had the hearing.

I won - but the Judge told me I was a very lucky boy and told me off for parking without a permit. I'm afraid I would not consider the Judge to be one who is likely to decide in favour of the typical counter-arguments used on this forum.

BWL will pay me half of the £95 witness costs (hearing lasted less than an hour) within 14 days.

Things to note:
1. The Judge never received my WS and so I cannot call my adaptation of the WS produced by @robertcox999 a winning one. It was lucky that I submitted a thought-through response to the Claimant's WS otherwise the Judge would have had only my adapted defence template, which he was not a fan of in the slightest.

2. The Judge was not interested in my claim for additional costs. He may have been more sympathetic had he read the reasoning in my WS, but he felt like I'd got away with one, rather than that BWL/Countrywide were being unreasonable.

3. The hearing was a lot less scary than I thought it would be. The Judge was pleasant, the Claimant's rep was pleasant and I was given ample opportunity to ask questions, respond to the claim and lay out my defence - although as it was clear the Judge was ruling in my favour early on, I chose not to talk beyond the key point of there being directly contradictory evidence in the Claimant's pack.

4. If you get the chance to respond to the Claimant's WS, make sure you at least write a response, even if you don't submit it. It really helps to have a crib-sheet, and if you are nervous, to have a well-written paragraph to just read out.

5. Make sure you submit a bundle of the documents you are expecting the Judge to be able to see (Defence, WS, response to WS). I wish I had.

6. The Judge asked whether I was willing to settle before the Hearing. I tried to say as best I could, without being facetious, that I would be willing to settle for a payment of £0. I probably wouldn't do that again, as I think it perhaps didn't go down too well. Better to say that you are unwilling to settle I reckon.

7. The entire process is one I would only recommend to people who are able to cope with some level of anxiety and who are willing to dedicate the time and effort to be prepared. Whilst I was successful, I only contested it on moral grounds (if you don't put the signs up and don't have the evidence, you shouldn't just be able to scare people into paying). The time, effort and stress put into this enormously outweighs the cost I would have had to pay had I lost, and the £40odd quid I'll get back does not nearly compensate me.

8. Check, thoroughly, for signs before you park. This process is not worth the, often reasonable, cost of parking and I am lucky that they were disorganised and could not prove there were signs there. The Judge would not have accepted "I didn't see them" - I did not see any, but I did not check thoroughly - and only decided in my favour because I pointed out that the Claimant's own pictures of my vehicle contradicted the signage site map and previous photos of signage, and the picture of a sign from the day was too zoomed in to be able to tell where it was.

Thank you to all who helped. In particular, @robertcox999, @Coupon-mad, @KeithP, @beamerguy, @D_P_Dance, @Le_Kirk, @Umkomaas, @Redx, @Fruitcake and @SayNoToPCN.

I very nearly just paid a few months ago because I (and my [ex-]partner) didn't want the hassle. Very glad I didn't.

Umkomaas

Very good result, well done. And your synopsis of the hearing is great and with some very useful pointers for others who inevitably will be treading the same path in future. 

Don't spend your £40 too quickly (but I'm sure there'll be enough to cover a couple of celebration shandies)! 👍

Le_Kirk

Well done on the win, shame about costs but at least you made the PPC pay!  I don't understand why the judge did not get your WS, surely that is a failing of the court and its processes.  You sent it to the court and claimant I assume from reading your thread.

Coupon-mad

Yay - well done!  

Another Countrywide Parking Management & BW Legal one bites the dust!

It is unfair if the Judge just declared he didn't receive your WS if you emailed it in time.  The court had it and this was his problem to address, not to plough on without your WS. 

When this has happened to me I've just emailed the WS and evidence straight to the Judge during the hearing but that's not great because it means they haven't read it.  Wholly unsatisfactory and worse for you, because your Judge made no effort to find out why he hadn't got it and how the court had let YOU down by not putting what you'd emailed in front of him.

Now, please do us and yourself (and the driving public) a favour and stick around on this forum every week - at least for the Summer - to ensure you see when the Government publish and open the final Technical Consultation.

We will be talking about it and the public will have about 4 weeks we think, to tell the MHCLG what you think about the level of parking charges, that the MHCLG has admirably decided already will start at £50 (50% discount) and not £100:

Outcome of 2020 Consultation:

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/parking-code-enforcement-framework/outcome/parking-code-enforcement-framework-consultation-response

Planned Summer 2021 additional Public Consultation:

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/government-to-open-technical-consultation-on-fairer-parking-charges

It's not open yet but please keep check here to see when it is.  We need real people like you to counter the spamming that happened last time from the industry.

bbwoi

jrhys said:

I've now seen that one of the links I posted to a 'redacted' WS contained some personal information when the text was selected. If anyone has downloaded that for personal use, please delete it.

For anyone who has been pointed here for my WS (which now does reference contractual landholder authority) see the generic example (below) instead. It is best downloaded and edited in MS Word (Google docs doesn't quuiitttee do the job on the formatting; no idea about OpenOffice etc.).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10_T0OSPwcewp5MrODOIvxFOa1GSKa7Oz/view?usp=sharing 

Hi there,

Where in this does your witness statement end and where does the defence start? I have been struggling to figure out the difference in a lot of the ones I have seen in this forum. Are they different documents that you send?

D_P_Dance

The PPC has wasted your time, now  waste theirs, read  this,

https://www.citizensadvice.org.uk/law-and-courts/legal-system/small-claims/making-a-small-claim/