Parking Eye Batheaston

JeffAstle

I moved to Bath in 2017 and, in the stress of moving house and jobs, I forgot to change the address of my vehicle with the DVLA. We are registered at Batheaston Medical Centre as our local GPs and next door to the centre is a small car park. This had always been free historically and, in summer 2018, the owner of the car park (A local pub landlord) decided to put it under the ownership of Parking Eye Solutions. The change was not well communicated and signage was poor resulting in a lot of locals getting hefty fines of £60+ for not paying 20p to park for 30 minutes. In 2019, we received a parking notice from Parking Eye (I had changed my address with the DVLA by this point) and we actually had the pay and display ticket to prove we had paid and it still took them several exchanges of letters and around 4 months elapsed time before they withdrew it. The worst, however, was yet to come.

In February 2020, we received 7 letters from Baliliffs (dcbl Solutions)chasing us for debt recovery relating to 7 parking offences on this car park dating back to 2018. Clearly, Parking Eye had not been able to connect with us directly because of the DVLA issue. Although, they had, in the meantime, issued me with the notice mentioned above (Subsequently withdrawn) for the same vehicle registration at our current address. The letters were threatening and informed us we had no right of appeal so it was pay up or go to court and the fines were now £170 for each offence so a total of £1190 for £1.40 of alleged missed parking charges (7 x 20p). I had a number of exchanges with dcbl both by phone and letter (Parking Eye refused to speak to me). I asked for some photographic evidence together with the original parking notices as I was not even sure we had used the car park on the dates concerned. These were provided so I then asked for 2 further pieces of evidence: a) photographic evidence that visible signage was in place at the time of the offences and also, evidence that we had NOT paid. Clearly, we don't keep 18 month old pay and display tickets so I wanted to see some evidence. The final letter from this part of the engagement was late March at the time of the first lockdown. I never received a response to this request and didn't hear back from dcbl again until two weeks ago (a further 14 months later) with what amounts to seven final final debt recovery letters. I have written back again asking them where the response is to my previous letter but haven't heard back. At the moment , it looks like I will have to wait to see if Parking Eye decide to take me to court. To complete the story, I have acknowledged that the vehicle in question was owned by me at the time but haven't disclosed who the driver was.

By now, you are probably thinking I am an awkward individual who is trying to get out of paying fines which I richly deserved. To this I would say that we are not people who routinely ignore parking restrictions and rack up lots of fines. Everyone has had the odd parking fine and we are no exception but I was simply astonished when the original bailiff letters came through as there is no way we would knowingly use a pay and display car park seven times without paying. To be frank, we would have had to be completely crazy to not have paid the 20p charge and risk a hefty fine. Yes, I was an idiot for not changing my address details with the DVLA but that doesn't justify the level of fines which are now being raised.

Some questions which other people may be able to help with:
1. Has anyone else had a similar experience either in Batheaston or with other sites run by Parking Eye?
2. Does anyone know whether there is some kind of time limit for bringing charges like this court?
3. Any other suggestions for anything else I might do to mitigate the risks either before or during court proceedings?

Le_Kirk

I have not had the same or similar experience but I can tell you that the limitation on chasing debt through the courts is six years.  At the moment it seems like you only have debt collector letters.  Are you sure you have not had any letter before/of claim or a N1 claim form from Northampton CCBC?  You should send a Data Rectification Notice to the DPO of ParkingEye informing them of your address for service and requiring them to erase your old address and to inform any and all of their agents and sub-contractors.  The last thing you want is claim form going to the wrong address and getting a CCJ in default.

Umkomaas

Is the correspondence from DCB Limited or DCB Legal - important distinction.  I suspect it's the former.

With 7 outstanding tickets (over £1k's worth) PE would not be putting this out with debt collectors, rather, with their in-house legal team, including 2 full time solicitors on their payroll, they wouldn't have hung on to this late stage without having sued you in their own name. As the country's most litigious parking firm (until last year) having issued around 100,000 court proceedings per year, you have to ask why they haven't included you in that number. 

The strong possibility is that the landowner did not agree to PE taking any court action in their contract with them. To me this is the most likely scenario. In which case (I can't guarantee it absolutely), my hunch is it won't progress any further other than hassle letters from DCB Limited. So it's just ignore those letters. If they truly are debt chaser drivel, this is not a dangerous or worrying stage at all. 

Just please confirm that it is DCB Limited, and the letters don't refer to them undertaking High Court Enforcement, other than on the letter somewhere it stating that this isn't a High Court Enforcement situation. 

JeffAstle

Hi Umkomaas, it is DCB Limited and they confirm they will not take High Court Enforcement in their letters. I'm very much hoping your hunch is correct. I did get one of the parish councillors to speak to the owner by the way but he apparently said he couldn't get involved.

Umkomaas

JeffAstle said:

Hi Umkomaas, it is DCB Limited and they confirm they will not take High Court Enforcement in their letters. I'm very much hoping your hunch is correct. I did get one of the parish councillors to speak to the owner by the way but he apparently said he couldn't get involved.

So just leave it alone, don't pick at a scab, otherwise it might bleed. See where this goes to. Some PPCs use DCB Limited initially, then if it is not resolved (paid!) it passes to DCB Legal, then potentially to a court claim. The debt collector stage is utterly benign whichever PPC is involved. 

But this is PE, and we have yet to see any outstanding unpaid PE PCN passed to debt collectors (and they use a few) and then progress to court - possible reasons in my prior post. PE don't need the likes of DCBL (whichever shade) to do any dirty work for them when they have a very able litigation capacity of their own. 

Why have a dog when you can bark yourself?(to slightly twist a well known saying!)

Coupon-mad

Yep, ParkingEye have farmed out some cases to DCBL they have no intention to sue over (because they would have done themselves by now).

The only thing you may want to do is confirm to P/Eye your correct address for service by using their data concerns online form.  I think I would just do that, so that when DCBL give up and pass the file back to ParkingEye, then you can be sure P/Eye have the right address.  You cannot assume DCBL will tell them you have been engaging. and that there is a new address for you.

Redx

At you sure that is Parking Eye ? Of Chorley in lancs ?? ( No solutions )

There are some companies ith Solutions in their name , like Premier Parking Solutions for example ?

You need to be 100% sure of each and every name that sends you letters , otherwise the advice here could be incorrect

But 6 years is defined in the Limitations Act 1980 , to answer Q2

Q1 , plenty of Parking Eye cases , the most famous being the Barry Beavis case

Q3 , a landowner cancellation is best , it ALWAYS is !!