Highview Parking DCB legal Ltd County Court Business Centre Claim form March 2022

TZ750

Hello All.

Please could I ask for your assistance with my  recent CCBC claim form?

I have read with amazement ,the wealth of knowledge  in regards to fighting these  claims .

To set the scene I received the original PCN back in 2018 . I ignored it, as  wrongly,I assumed it would go away  . 
Massive error and shortsightedness on my behalf  as i didnt take the time to research this Forum at that time

I subsequently ignored all follow up PCN and demands from  DRP , SCS ,dcbl  and finally dcbl legal. and their increasing  amounts 
then decreasing  , and then increasing to the final figure of £155.00

Consequently I have received the CBCC claim  form .   This figure is   now 195.26 + 35 + 50  =  280.26

I read all the Newbies instructions  and submitted an AOS    . I have inadvertantly ticked the "I intend to contest  jurisdiction "box.
Im not sure what possesd me ,Panic /fear /wrong glasses .

As soon as I realised my error ,I rang MCOL to explain . The lady there couldn`t change ,it but recognised I had asked for more time .
I have till the 28.03.2022 to file a defence .

I have asked Nexus Group/Highview for a   SAR.  

I am now really concerned about ticking the wrong box and should I still persue my defence as I cocked up ??

Do I ask drp legal for SAR as well ? 

I have been reading about the March changes and to include them in new defences .
and reading about  the Overiding Objective/ Pofa 2012 in preparation 

So what should I do next ?

Thanks  in advance  TZ750







  

Umkomaas

I am now really concerned about ticking the wrong box and should I still persue my defence as I cocked up ??

You mean pay Highview Parking £280.26 because you've inadvertently ticked a 'wrong box'?  Don't be daft!

Please tell us the Date of Issue shown on the N180 county court claim form, and the date on which your AOS was submitted. Forum regular @KeithP will be along afterwards to give you your key dates and required actions to get your Defence into process. 

Fruitcake

Don't worry about the wrong box being ticked for the time being.

Post the dates as requested above.

Follow the guide to court written by bargepole in the second post of the NEWBIES.

Adapt the relevant paragraphs of the new defence template and post them here. (Only post the parts you have amended).

Please tell us where the alleged event occurred as it may have cropped up here before. Please also tell us what happened when you complained to the landowner.

You should also complain to your MP about this unregulated industry.

KeithP

Hello and welcome.

What is the Issue Date on your County Court Claim Form?

Upon what date did you file an Acknowledgment of Service?
Your MCOL Claim History will have the definitive answer to that.

Ticking the 'contest jurisdiction' box will not be a problem. There is a fee associated with that and as long as you don't pay that fee, which of course you won't, it will be ignored. Forget about it.

TZ750

Thanks for your prompt responses !
I can feel the sweat abate a little.

Issue date of CCBC claim : 21 Feb 2022

AOS date was 09 March 2022

The car park in Question was Waterfields in Watford 

KeithP

TZ750 said:

The car park in Question was Waterfields in Watford 

We've seen that car park mentioned several times on here.
Use the forum's search facility to see how others have fared.

TZ750 said:

Issue date of CCBC claim : 21 Feb 2022
AOS date was 09 March 2022

With a Claim Issue Date of 21st February, and having filed an Acknowledgment of Service in a timely manner, you have until 4pm on Monday 28th March 2022 to file your Defence.

That's well over a week away. Plenty of time to produce a Defence, but please don't leave it to the last minute.

To create a Defence, and then file a Defence by email, look at the second post in the NEWBIES thread.

Don't miss the deadline for filing a Defence.

Do not try and file a Defence via the MoneyClaimOnline website. Once an Acknowledgment of Service has been filed, the MCOL website should be treated as 'read only'.

Fruitcake

Waterfields what? Water park, hospital, retail park, bookshop ...?

Google streetview (GSV) may have some useful historic images of the site 

Coupon-mad

A couple of Highview defences have been worked on this week.  Make sure you include the fact Highview don't use the POFA and can't hold keepers liable.

It is in HV defences this week, I recall seeing it.

You know about the new statutory Code of Practice and the groundbreaking stuff within it?

Did you know that car park was named and shamed in the House of Lords by Lord Lucas? Here is what he said in 2019 about the new CoP:

https://www.parallelparliament.co.uk/lord/lord-lucas/debate/2019-01-18/lords/lords-chamber/parking-code-of-practice-bill

My Lords, it will not surprise anyone that I, too, welcome the Bill. I have some history in this area. I have a long involvement with an organisation called the London Motorists’ Action Group, mostly concerned with fighting Westminster and Camden. My noble friend Lord Leigh will share my views on their attitude to motorists who wish to park.

I am delighted that things are better in Watford, although not at Waterfields, I notice, which has one of those private car parks that operates a cliff edge: two hours free; for the first second after that, £85. One thing that must be got right in the code is that operators whose finances depend on extracting penalties from motorists, as many of these companies do, should not be allowed to continue in business. If they are operating parking and basically running it off the fees that they get for parking at a steady rate, that seems all right. If they are getting very little from that and most from extortionate penalties, that seems to me a very antisocial way to behave, and I very much hope that that will not be allowed by the code.

In regard to that, I very much hope that the Minister will offer us a meeting between Second Reading and Committee. That would help cut down the amount of talking and amendments that we have to get through at that stage. We all support the Bill, but we all have ideas, and we would like a better understanding of the details than we can get from a short speech by the Minister at the end of Second Reading.

Like others, I want clear and fair rules. It should be clear that waiting is not parking. That is something I have been on the wrong end of in a private car park.

Given my history, I tend to be quite competitive about these things and in the end they give up and go away, but it is not fair that people in general should be subject to threatening letters just because they have paused for a moment while remaining entirely in charge of the car. Setting someone down in a hospital car park is not parking, and the code should not permit it to be charged for.

For this to work, we need a good flow of information. Rather than push this through some bureaucratic mechanism, we should require information to be published. Anyone running a private car park should be required to publish on the website—which they must have to enable appeals and so on—information about how many people park there, how many fines they issue, what is going on in that car park which affects the motorist and how they should look at the consequences of parking there. Public indignation is the cheapest and best way to ensure that, in a very diverse and scattered industry, we get good performance.

On penalties, there seems to be an idea that £100 is a reasonable amount to charge people for overstaying in a car park. Mostly, that is done by mistake. Yes, it is certainly reasonable to charge a fee to cover the cost of digging the money out of someone who has forgotten to pay, but it is absolutely unreasonable that that could be £100: £30 might be more like it, I guess. Again, that matter should be in the code; we should not allow excessive premia for people who have merely forgotten to pay.

Indeed, in everything we do, we should encourage compliance. Noble Lords may remember the early days of the London congestion charge, when the system was designed to catch people out and incur fines. Then, the system became compliance-friendly: you could sign up so that if you drove into the congestion charge zone, you were automatically charged that day’s fee.

Modern technology from several competing companies out there enables this to be done on a small scale in private car parks. We ought to insist that any space for more than a few cars should use these motorist-friendly systems to charge people for parking. You should be able to register, particularly if you use a car park or an operator with any regularity, and be charged automatically when your vehicle is recognised going in and out of the car park. The system is simple and reliable; we ought to insist on it.

On the internal appeal system—the bit before the external appeal system—we ought to insist that companies document what is going on so that their performance can be reviewed. It is not right that appeals get rejected on principle; people do not want to risk adding 50% to their penalty by going to the external system.

The internal system must be well run and fair, and it must be possible to check that.

The external system needs to be effective and cheap, which is difficult to achieve. We ought to allow the external system to be pretty robust in saying when an appeal is hopeless and dismissing it in short order, otherwise it gets far too expensive to operate.

On the other hand, the person reviewing the system ought to have legal expertise. In my one involvement with Poplar, I was astonished by how little the person conducting the appeal understood about the law of the land. I do not think that they had any legal training at all. The appeal system needs some kind of quality control—someone to review and check things to make sure that what is going on is up to the standard we expect.

The key to this is building a self-improving system with a clear and strong flow of information on what is good practice, what is going wrong and what is being done to improve things so that, over time, we can push towards better practice and not be satisfied with anything like the current system.

I am delighted by the way the Bill has been drafted, which offers us the opportunity to get where we need to go. I look forward to my conversations with the Minister.

TZ750

Fantastic  , that is an eye opener !
I was not aware  that this car park had been named and shamed by Lord Lucas.
It is indeed Waterfields Retail Park .
I will get down there Saturday and ID the signage and take photos . I will reference Google in the interim to see if there are any useable historic photos.

I will research the new the new statutory Code of Practice .

In the meantime  GroupNexus have replied to my request with their standard pro -forma,
ANPR Subject Access Request-Under GDPR,which I will  return with only the Identification required.

Do I need to request the same SAR from  dcblegal?

I have reviewed the original PCN  from Highview and there is no mention of POFA on the document ,front or back
is this  a standard format for their PCN document? to omit the POFA requirement?  

Once I  locate and read recent Highview defence  , I should be able to formulate my own defence .

Right ..Im on it.

Coupon-mad

In the meantime  GroupNexus have replied to my request with their standard pro -forma,
ANPR Subject Access Request-Under GDPR,which I will  return with only the Identification required.

And not ticking the sneaky question asking whether you were driving.


"Do I need to request the same SAR from  dcblegal?"

No.

I have reviewed the original PCN  from Highview and there is no mention of POFA on the document ,front or back
is this  a standard format for their PCN document? to omit the POFA requirement?  

Yes, always has been.

Makes it easier for them; no short deadlines and most victims blab in their appeal,  about who was driving.

TZ750

I have looked at a few recent Highview defences and  have considered my defence using  the new March template and  their valid points :

The facts as known to the Defendant:

2. It is admitted that the Defendant was the registered keeper of the vehicle in question but liability is denied. The Defendant was Not the Driver of the vehicle and is unable to recall who was driving  on the

date in the particulars of claim  17/05/2018.

3. The defendant believes that the" Notice to Keeper" was not compliant  with the Protections of Freedoms Act 2012  ( PoFA)  as there is no reference to PoFA  within that Notice to Keeper.Therefore The Defendant as the registered keeper of the vehicle in question notes that they cannot be held liable due to the Claimant not complying with the ‘keeper liability’ requirements set out in the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 ('PoFA'), Schedule 4.

4. In the Particulars of Claim ('POC') it is stated that the Defendant is liable as the driver or keeper but the Claimant has failed to provide any evidence that Defendant was also the driver. The Defendant cannot be held liable for the charges as the keeper of the vehicle.  

5. Following on from [3] & [4], where it is noted that the Claimant has elected not to comply with the 'keeper liability' requirements set out in PoFA, Claimant has included a clear falsehood in their POC which were signed under a statement of truth by the Claimant's legal representative who should know (as the Claimant undoubtedly does) that it is untrue to state that the Defendant is 'liable as keeper'.  This can never be the case with a Highview Parking Limited claim because this parking firm, same as any Group Nexus company, have never used the POFA 2012 wording, of their own volition.  Not only does the POC include this misleading untruth, but the Claimant has also added an unidentified sum in false 'damages' to enhance the claims.  So sparse is their statement of case, that the Claimant has failed to even state any facts about the alleged breach or the amount of the parking charge that was on the signage, because it cannot have been over £100. Which then leads to the question, how does the Claimant arrive at the Amount Claimed for a Total of £280.26  The Defendant has included the £35 Court Fee & £50 Legal representative's costs from the Total amount for the purposes of this defence point.

6. The Parking and Traffic Appeals Service (PATAS) and Parking on Private Land Appeals (POPLA) lead adjudicator and barrister, Henry Michael Greenslade, clarified that with regards to keeper liability, “There is no ‘reasonable presumption’ in law that the registered keeper of a vehicle is the driver and the operators should never suggest anything of the sort” (POPLA report 2015).

7. The Defendant does  recall receiving the original PCN. The Defendant upon receiving the Claim Form has subsequently requested a copy via Subject Access Request to Group Nexus (who through research the Defendant now understand own Highview Parking Limited)

I do actually have all the correspondence from the past 4 years .Filed  .

the original charge notice was for £85.00 .A reduced sum  of £51.00 if paid in 14 days. and an initial 

debt recovery charge of £40.00.  Are they able to add this spurious debt recovery charge ??

I have been to the car park . It would appear the signage has never been changed i.e. still £85.00

I have looked at the new code statutory code of Practice  and can see that the signage would need to be 

alot more visible/prominent  and  with enhanced height lettering  ,but would this be applied retrospectively ?

The new CoP is alot to take on board !