Parking fine help, claim form received from DCB Legal

Kayteeheych

D_P_Dance said:

It is not a fine but an invoice for damages for  an alleged breach of contract.  Have you complained to your MP?.  Do not expect competence from PPCs,  they emply people who cannot get work anywhere else.  

No I haven’t written to my MP, wasn’t sure if it was worth doing so late in the process, or if relevant as the car park in question is outside of our MPs constituency. I don’t rate our MP in the slightest, I most certainly didn’t vote for him! 

Kayteeheych

Coupon-mad said:

If you lose you'd likely pay less than on the claim form.  The NEWBIES thread explains why.

Inconspicuous signs is a defence but not reading clear signs, isn't.  Most private parking sites are NOT well signed, in our experience here.

All new threads are from people who've never done this before and 99% win or see the case discontinued before the hearing (phone hearings these days).  Well worth defending, no risk, no CCJ and nothing scary.

Thanks for that, I feel better that I at least have valid points to dispute this on and will do my best at putting a defence together using the advice on here. If it was just a case of me not bothering to pay for parking and hoping I’d get away with it I’d have paid the fine by now but at the time I genuinely could not find a sign which explained the parking terms, a payment machine, an attendant or anything in the slightest to point me in the directions of the rules, so I just believed the locals who said parking was free. 

Redx

Kayteeheych said:

Redx said:

Your SAR should have gone to the DPO at the parking company , not dcb legal !! ( So to the DPO at UKPC LTD )

The legal company are a third party acting for the claimant , the claimant is the parking company , not dcb legal

I sent them to both the parking company and DCBL just in case to see what information everyone is holding on me. In that case should I just ignore this one and wait on a response from UKPC? 

Correct , it should not have gone to Dcb legal , their reply is a fob off but isn't relevant , so file it and move on to the important stuff

You have not been issued with a fine , it was a PCN , an invoice !

You should never call it a fine , it's like calling apple juice , cider , they are similar , but not the same !

Kayteeheych

Redx said:

Kayteeheych said:

Redx said:

Your SAR should have gone to the DPO at the parking company , not dcb legal !! ( So to the DPO at UKPC LTD )

The legal company are a third party acting for the claimant , the claimant is the parking company , not dcb legal

I sent them to both the parking company and DCBL just in case to see what information everyone is holding on me. In that case should I just ignore this one and wait on a response from UKPC? 

Correct , it should not have gone to Dcb legal , their reply is a fob off but isn't relevant , so file it and move on to the important stuff

You have not been issued with a fine , it was a PCN , an invoice !

You should never call it a fine , it's like calling apple juice , cider , they are similar , but not the same !

Thanks. Will refrain from using the f word from now on! 

Coupon-mad

Yes ignore that DCBLegal reply but of course you are not 'waiting' for anything if you have a live court claim.  The court clock is ticking.  The SAR reply is not needed for you to file and serve your defence.

Kayteeheych

I was hoping to hear back from them as part of preparing my defence because the original PCN was from almost 6 years ago I can’t remember the exact details of how long I overstayed etc and don’t have the original paperwork. I didn’t want to write something wrong on my defence and then come off looking like a liar. 

Also does anyone know if there are any cases related to unclear/ambiguous signage that would be useful to reference in the defence that would be specific to my case or do I just stick to the exact template from the newbies thread? 

D_P_Dance

There are hundreds of such signs, here is one.

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/5972164/parking-eye-signs-oxford-road-reading/p1

Redx

You only adapt paragraphs 2 and 3 , into up to 4 or 5 complete paragraphs , so let's see them , let's see what you have so far

Read recently completed court claim cases , see what they did ! We have written the title of a very well known song by Queen on the successful ones , use the Search box etc to find them , we won't search , that is your job !  Lol. 😀😀. HINT below

AOBTD

Coupon-mad

Yes, I agree you are hoping to get the SAR back to write more meaningful facts in your defence but not waiting so long that you miss the defence deadline @KeithP gave you earlier.

You do not actually need the SAR to defend an old case you know nothing about.

Have a look at any Highview 2015 PCN claim threads - there were a flurry of those threads early Summer - and all of those Defendants used similar wording to defend.  It is kind of obvious what to write...you will see when you search for and read a few.

Kayteeheych

Hi, so I have received the SAR back from UKPC and now have a copy of the original PCN (see attached image). They have provided time stamped photos on entry and exit showing my registration number, the entry photo being too dark to make out anything other than a registration plate and the exit photo is a black and white image ( I think too unclear for anyone to positively ID me as the driver).

The reason for issuing the PCN is cited as overstaying the maximum allowed parking period of 3 hours, as the stay was 3 hours and 20 minutes exactly. 

Interestingly I have found the historical google street view images (as advised to others in another forum post) of the entrance to the car park closest to the time in question (July 2015) and there were absolutely no signs at all on display at the entrance!! 

Have had a look at a few of the highview claims but a lot of these seem to ride on an issue with wording in the PCNs from the company making these invalid which I have no idea if this is the case with UKPC.

Therefore it is my intention to defend on the basis of lack of signage, unless I’m missing a point somewhere?

Thank