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Defence advice needed - Premier Park Limited & BW Legal
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Montarivo
Posts: 34 Forumite
I am fighting a PPC regarding a PCN that I do not believe I should have to pay as I did not see that I was entering a contractual agreement to pay for parking as the signage was small, dimly lit (the incident took place at night), and not obviously placed. On top of that, the PPC has added the usual overinflated sums and seeks double recovery of the debt, and so I do not wish to support this kind of exploitative and predatory behavior. I now have a hearing date set for 1st March 2022 and have submitted my Witness Statement as of this morning, Tuesday 15th February.
Defence: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bPYQy_aAVfLtOTFGjmVwQwhlwK7kudNK/view?usp=sharing
Witness Statement: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zujGhARqGi1eDLNOGxU7uf-cBh-C8aIx/view?usp=sharing
Here is a timeline of events for my case:
19/09/20 - I move residences to another county as part of my postgraduate studies, and only updated the address on my physical driving license, not the paper counter-part (this is important to note now as it explains why I wasn't aware of the PCN until 15/04/21).
30/09/20 - I park in the car park of the alleged contravention to go ice-skating with my partner, and do not see any signs or indication that I was supposed to pay for parking. Hence, I did not pay for a ticket, and stayed parked from 19:47 to 21:23.
08/10/20 - The PPC issue an NTK to my previous address, as I regrettably hadn't updated my address properly with the DVLA, and had only updated the physical driving license. This NTK sought payment for a charge of £100, or £60 if I had paid within 14 days. There were ANPR photographs of my car entering and leaving the car park at the specified times on this NTK.
07/11/20 - The PPC issue another NTK claiming I now owe them the £100 charge as I hadn't responded in time to the previous NTK. Again, I did not receive this at the time as it was sent to my previous address.
08/12/20 - A "FINAL REMINDER" NTK is served to my previous address, stating that £115 was due, where the £15 had been added as "additional administrative costs". The PPC also threatens that debt recovery action was pending.
09/01/21 - I realise that my DVLA address hadn't been updated properly for the V5C logbook, and so submit a change of address application via the DVLA website. I receive the updated V5C in the post roughly 2 weeks later.
15/04/21 - This was the first time I was aware of the contravention and was confused and upset to receive an LoC from the PPC's solicitors, BW Legal, threatening to issue a claim against me in the County Court if their outstanding balance wasn't paid by 15/05/21. The estimated claim of £241.87 was broken down as follows:
£100 - Principal Debt
£60 - Recovery Costs
£6.87 - Estimated Interest
£25 - Estimated Court Fees
£50 - Estimated Solicitor's Costs
04/05/21 - I email BW Legal asking for more details of the contravention such as photographs of me entering and leaving the site on the specified date and times, as I try to make sense of the claim being imposed upon me.
14/05/21 - BW Legal use my mistake in not updating my address, and hence my confusion, to their advantage by not responding to my email until one day before the aforementioned deadline of legal proceedings being issued. They respond to my email on this date with copies of the three NTKs sent to my previous address, along with photographs of my car from the ANPR camera. I could now start to piece together the claim and my involvement with it.
At this point, I was under heavy stress and workload from the master's degree I was undertaking, along with the stress of my partner of 5 years not securing a visa after her studies and having to return to her birth country, and so I did not respond to BW Legal until the following legal proceedings had been issued against me.
04/08/21 - I receive a Claim Form from the County Court Business Centre on behalf of the claimant, Premier Park Limited. The total claim was for £251.16, broken down into:
£166.16 - Amount claimed
£35 - Court fee
£50 - Legal representative's costs
16/08/21 - BW Legal send me a letter telling me "it's not too late to pay!", offering payment plans for if I am financially struggling. The amount has somehow risen to £251.16. I ignore this letter.
22/08/21 - I respond to the Claim Form by filing my AoS via MCOL, one day before the deadline of 23/08/21.
25/08/21 - I return to the car park to research the alleged signage and ToC of restrictions that apply to the site. I am surprised to find that the site does in fact employ parkign restrictions and signage, however, the signs are not obviously placed, small, and the entrance sign is not clearly readable unless on foot. I now realise the deceptive use of signs is why I wasn't aware of parking restrictions on the evening of the alleged contravention, and take photographs of the signs and car park to begin constructing my defence.
05/09/21 - I submit my defence to CCBCAQ and BW Legal, adapting the template defence from this forum.
06/09/21 - HM Courts & Tribunals Service acknowledge receipt of my defence.
22/09/21 - BW Legal serve a Notice of Intention to Proceed.
04/10/21 - Notice of Allocation to Small Claims Track is received.
06/10/21 - BW Legal respond to my defence, stating that "it is apparent that a large amount of the information contained therein has simply been 'copied and pasted' from an external source, which we see on a regular basis. Large portions of your Defence are irrelevant to the claim and therefore nonsensical, and therefore unreasonable." They also seek the outstanding balance of £251.16.
11/10/21 - BW Legal serve a copy of their client's DQ (N180)
20/10/21 - I submit my DQ (N180) to CCBCAQ and BW Legal.
01/11/21 - BW Legal attempt to "assist me" by allowing me to pay the outstanding charges via their pre-approved offer. I ignore this.
08/11/21 - Notice of Transfer of Proceedings is issued to all parties, where the claim has been transferred to the CC Hearing Centre for allocation.
15/01/22 - General Form of Judgement Or Order is served, with a hearing date allocated for 01/03/22 at 10:00.
02/02/22 - BW Legal issue me a letter whereby the balance due has increased to £278.16 (they appear to have added the £27 trial fee) and offer me a 25% discount on the claim, stating they will notify the court the hearing doesn't need to go ahead if I pay the discounted amount of £208.62 by 22/02/22.
07/02/22 - I receive a thick document int he post which is the Claimant's defence bundle with WS.
15/02/22 @ 04:23 - I submit my WS bundle to CCBAQ and the Claimant.
15/02/22 @ 09:23 - CCBAQ reply telling me I need to submit my WS to the relevant court.
15/02/22 @ 11:23 - I submit my WS bundle in an email to the specific court allocated to my claim.
If anybody has managed to read until this point, that alone I am grateful for and thank you for your time. I have attached my defence and WS to this post, and would greatly appreciate any feedback on my WS in particular, and if you think I need to prepare any of my points more carefully for the hearing. I understand that I may also need to prepare a skeleton argument and crib sheet to help argue my points in the hearing, so advice on this would also be excellent.
If I need to submit the skeleton argument to the court and solicitor, then I will get on that ASAP, but as I understand it, just the WS is necessary for now.
I know my WS is slightly rushed and may contain weak arguments due to a lack of time spent constructing sound references to previous court decisions and literature. Therefore, I would really appreciate the insight and opinion of the experts on this forum as to whether my WS and case have many legs to stand on, and if it would be more economical to pay the discounted charge of £208.62 by 22/02/22, and also avoiding the stress of the hearing and saving the judge's time.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this post. I hope this clearly lays out the details of my case.
Defence: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1bPYQy_aAVfLtOTFGjmVwQwhlwK7kudNK/view?usp=sharing
Witness Statement: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1zujGhARqGi1eDLNOGxU7uf-cBh-C8aIx/view?usp=sharing
Here is a timeline of events for my case:
19/09/20 - I move residences to another county as part of my postgraduate studies, and only updated the address on my physical driving license, not the paper counter-part (this is important to note now as it explains why I wasn't aware of the PCN until 15/04/21).
30/09/20 - I park in the car park of the alleged contravention to go ice-skating with my partner, and do not see any signs or indication that I was supposed to pay for parking. Hence, I did not pay for a ticket, and stayed parked from 19:47 to 21:23.
08/10/20 - The PPC issue an NTK to my previous address, as I regrettably hadn't updated my address properly with the DVLA, and had only updated the physical driving license. This NTK sought payment for a charge of £100, or £60 if I had paid within 14 days. There were ANPR photographs of my car entering and leaving the car park at the specified times on this NTK.
07/11/20 - The PPC issue another NTK claiming I now owe them the £100 charge as I hadn't responded in time to the previous NTK. Again, I did not receive this at the time as it was sent to my previous address.
08/12/20 - A "FINAL REMINDER" NTK is served to my previous address, stating that £115 was due, where the £15 had been added as "additional administrative costs". The PPC also threatens that debt recovery action was pending.
09/01/21 - I realise that my DVLA address hadn't been updated properly for the V5C logbook, and so submit a change of address application via the DVLA website. I receive the updated V5C in the post roughly 2 weeks later.
15/04/21 - This was the first time I was aware of the contravention and was confused and upset to receive an LoC from the PPC's solicitors, BW Legal, threatening to issue a claim against me in the County Court if their outstanding balance wasn't paid by 15/05/21. The estimated claim of £241.87 was broken down as follows:
£100 - Principal Debt
£60 - Recovery Costs
£6.87 - Estimated Interest
£25 - Estimated Court Fees
£50 - Estimated Solicitor's Costs
04/05/21 - I email BW Legal asking for more details of the contravention such as photographs of me entering and leaving the site on the specified date and times, as I try to make sense of the claim being imposed upon me.
14/05/21 - BW Legal use my mistake in not updating my address, and hence my confusion, to their advantage by not responding to my email until one day before the aforementioned deadline of legal proceedings being issued. They respond to my email on this date with copies of the three NTKs sent to my previous address, along with photographs of my car from the ANPR camera. I could now start to piece together the claim and my involvement with it.
At this point, I was under heavy stress and workload from the master's degree I was undertaking, along with the stress of my partner of 5 years not securing a visa after her studies and having to return to her birth country, and so I did not respond to BW Legal until the following legal proceedings had been issued against me.
04/08/21 - I receive a Claim Form from the County Court Business Centre on behalf of the claimant, Premier Park Limited. The total claim was for £251.16, broken down into:
£166.16 - Amount claimed
£35 - Court fee
£50 - Legal representative's costs
16/08/21 - BW Legal send me a letter telling me "it's not too late to pay!", offering payment plans for if I am financially struggling. The amount has somehow risen to £251.16. I ignore this letter.
22/08/21 - I respond to the Claim Form by filing my AoS via MCOL, one day before the deadline of 23/08/21.
25/08/21 - I return to the car park to research the alleged signage and ToC of restrictions that apply to the site. I am surprised to find that the site does in fact employ parkign restrictions and signage, however, the signs are not obviously placed, small, and the entrance sign is not clearly readable unless on foot. I now realise the deceptive use of signs is why I wasn't aware of parking restrictions on the evening of the alleged contravention, and take photographs of the signs and car park to begin constructing my defence.
05/09/21 - I submit my defence to CCBCAQ and BW Legal, adapting the template defence from this forum.
06/09/21 - HM Courts & Tribunals Service acknowledge receipt of my defence.
22/09/21 - BW Legal serve a Notice of Intention to Proceed.
04/10/21 - Notice of Allocation to Small Claims Track is received.
06/10/21 - BW Legal respond to my defence, stating that "it is apparent that a large amount of the information contained therein has simply been 'copied and pasted' from an external source, which we see on a regular basis. Large portions of your Defence are irrelevant to the claim and therefore nonsensical, and therefore unreasonable." They also seek the outstanding balance of £251.16.
11/10/21 - BW Legal serve a copy of their client's DQ (N180)
20/10/21 - I submit my DQ (N180) to CCBCAQ and BW Legal.
01/11/21 - BW Legal attempt to "assist me" by allowing me to pay the outstanding charges via their pre-approved offer. I ignore this.
08/11/21 - Notice of Transfer of Proceedings is issued to all parties, where the claim has been transferred to the CC Hearing Centre for allocation.
15/01/22 - General Form of Judgement Or Order is served, with a hearing date allocated for 01/03/22 at 10:00.
02/02/22 - BW Legal issue me a letter whereby the balance due has increased to £278.16 (they appear to have added the £27 trial fee) and offer me a 25% discount on the claim, stating they will notify the court the hearing doesn't need to go ahead if I pay the discounted amount of £208.62 by 22/02/22.
07/02/22 - I receive a thick document int he post which is the Claimant's defence bundle with WS.
15/02/22 @ 04:23 - I submit my WS bundle to CCBAQ and the Claimant.
15/02/22 @ 09:23 - CCBAQ reply telling me I need to submit my WS to the relevant court.
15/02/22 @ 11:23 - I submit my WS bundle in an email to the specific court allocated to my claim.
If anybody has managed to read until this point, that alone I am grateful for and thank you for your time. I have attached my defence and WS to this post, and would greatly appreciate any feedback on my WS in particular, and if you think I need to prepare any of my points more carefully for the hearing. I understand that I may also need to prepare a skeleton argument and crib sheet to help argue my points in the hearing, so advice on this would also be excellent.
If I need to submit the skeleton argument to the court and solicitor, then I will get on that ASAP, but as I understand it, just the WS is necessary for now.
I know my WS is slightly rushed and may contain weak arguments due to a lack of time spent constructing sound references to previous court decisions and literature. Therefore, I would really appreciate the insight and opinion of the experts on this forum as to whether my WS and case have many legs to stand on, and if it would be more economical to pay the discounted charge of £208.62 by 22/02/22, and also avoiding the stress of the hearing and saving the judge's time.
Thank you very much for taking the time to read this post. I hope this clearly lays out the details of my case.
0
Comments
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Is this to do with any of your other threads? If so, it should be appended to the correct one, if not, apologies, please continue.1
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I haven't had time to read the whole thread but I'm sure you can't claim for solicitors fees in small claims, so that should be taken of their claim. As its meant to be easy so a litigant in person can use it.The court fees and trial fees can only be award by the judge if you lose the case and the judge awards cost to the other party.Also did you contact the landowner to cancel the PCN?I have a case against PP where they ignored multiple times a request to cancel the PCN from the landowner.PP have ignored correspondence from me and you could say they have acted unreasonable if they have done the same to you.
This i posted on your other thread before i saw you moved it.0 -
Yes, this is related to my other posts but those posts are fragmented and do not show a complete picture of the case, so I made this thread to present all information nicely in one place.Le_Kirk said:Is this to do with any of your other threads? If so, it should be appended to the correct one, if not, apologies, please continue.
I have added a post to the related threads directing users to this new, comprehensive thread instead.0 -
The claim form does not reference the £27 trial fee, it is only demanded of me in letters from the legal representatives, specifically the "outstanding balance" of BW Legal. They must be assuming I will lose the case and the judge will award their costs?!ANNOYED1 said:I haven't had time to read the whole thread but I'm sure you can't claim for solicitors fees in small claims, so that should be taken of their claim. As its meant to be easy so a litigant in person can use it.The court fees and trial fees can only be award by the judge if you lose the case and the judge awards cost to the other party.
No I haven't contacted the landowner to cancel this...perhaps I should try that now? There are still two weeks until the hearing so it might be worth a try?ANNOYED1 said:Also did you contact the landowner to cancel the PCN?I have a case against PP where they ignored multiple times a request to cancel the PCN from the landowner.PP have ignored correspondence from me and you could say they have acted unreasonable if they have done the same to you.0 -
It would be better if you asked a board guide @savvy or @soolin to merge all relevant threads into one where regulars could read the whole thread without having to dob about all over the forum.Montarivo said:
Yes, this is related to my other posts but those posts are fragmented and do not show a complete picture of the case, so I made this thread to present all information nicely in one place.Le_Kirk said:Is this to do with any of your other threads? If so, it should be appended to the correct one, if not, apologies, please continue.
I have added a post to the related threads directing users to this new, comprehensive thread instead.
2 -
Everything covered in the other threads is actually covered in this thread too, so I will ask a board guide to delete those other threads instead. That way I can just have one thread, this one, as a comprehensive overview of my case. ThanksLe_Kirk said:
It would be better if you asked a board guide @savvy or @soolin to merge all relevant threads into one where regulars could read the whole thread without having to dob about all over the forum.Montarivo said:
Yes, this is related to my other posts but those posts are fragmented and do not show a complete picture of the case, so I made this thread to present all information nicely in one place.Le_Kirk said:Is this to do with any of your other threads? If so, it should be appended to the correct one, if not, apologies, please continue.
I have added a post to the related threads directing users to this new, comprehensive thread instead.
0 -
And by taking that action, deleting all the good advice and guidance you have already received.Montarivo said:
I will ask a board guide to delete those other threads instead. That way I can just have one thread, this one, as a comprehensive overview of my case. ThanksLe_Kirk said:
It would be better if you asked a board guide @savvy or @soolin to merge all relevant threads into one where regulars could read the whole thread without having to dob about all over the forum.Montarivo said:
Yes, this is related to my other posts but those posts are fragmented and do not show a complete picture of the case, so I made this thread to present all information nicely in one place.Le_Kirk said:Is this to do with any of your other threads? If so, it should be appended to the correct one, if not, apologies, please continue.
I have added a post to the related threads directing users to this new, comprehensive thread instead.2 -
You're right - Although I have taken onboard all the advice and bookmarked the recommended references, I didn't consider how rude it is to just delete the advice as people have taken time and effort to write it...my apologies! I have messaged the board admin to ask to merge the posts instead of deleting them. Thanks for highlighting this.KeithP said:And by taking that action, deleting all the good advice and guidance you have already received.2 -
I would be very grateful if somebody could read through my WS and let me know if it forms a coherent, strong case.
As parts of it were inspired by other WS's on this forum, I want to be sure when applied to my case that it is logical and makes sense. Thanks0 -
Not sure what is going on but:-Defence claimant:-HX Car Park Management LIMITEDWitness claimant:-PREMIER PARK LIMITED
3
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