Unexpected CCJ

Coupon-mad

Yep. I'm quite proud of my own input towards achieving that clause.

verdomde

18           UK Parking Control Ltd are a part of the British Parking Association (BPA) (BPA.pdf). Under the BPA’s Approved Operator Code of Practice (please see attached BPA.pdf), it is stated:

 24.1 “Before serving a Letter Before Claim and prior to the issue of proceedings, Operators must, if no responses have been received to the NTD/NTK/reminder letters, take reasonable endeavours to ensure that the contact details for the person you are writing to are correct.”.

                In that same document:

APPENDIX C, 8(4) The notice must be given by:

(a) handing it to the keeper, or leaving it at a current address for service for the keeper, within the relevant period; or

(b) sending it by post to a current address for service for the keeper so that it is delivered

An address given by the DVLA is not intended or suitable as an address for service. DVLA data is notoriously unreliable, hence the BPA mandating further checks before filing court claims and the proposed new statutory Code of Practice from the DLUHC (Feb 2022) (DLUHC .pdf) spelling out the need for even earlier 'soft traces' and mandatory PCN re-issue (not a court claim) if a new address is found:

10. Action to recover unpaid parking charges

If a driver, keeper or hire company does not respond to a notice of parking charge or subsequent correspondence, or a parking charge has not been paid in full, reasonable endeavours - including contacting credit reference agencies to undertake a ‘soft trace’ - must be undertaken by the parking operator and/or its appointed debt recovery agent to establish the correct correspondence details of the driver, keeper or hire company before commencing enforcement action. Where a new address is discovered the notice of parking charge should be re-issued at the original rate but with a further 28 days from service for a response (payment or appeal).

DVLA data is only provided at the very start of the PCN process, for the limited purpose of (simply) enquiring of the keeper to provide details of who was driving and/or to appeal.  Whilst the keeper can (under certain strict circumstances) later become liable, there is no suggestion that the DVLA car registration address data provided can be assumed to be a reliable address for service of court papers much later on.  Especially in cases where the keeper has not responded nor appealed, which in itself is a fair indicator that the address may not be where the keeper lives.

 

18.1        My details were given to Debt Recovery Plus, who are IPC accredited Service Provider Members.  From the International Parking Community’s (IPC) Code of Practice v8, July 2021 (IPC.pdf)

22.1 Operators must take reasonable steps to ensure that the Motorist’s details are still correct if 12 months have passed from the Parking Event before issuing court proceedings.

UKScamsRUs

Coupon-mad said:

Yep. I'm quite proud of my own input towards achieving that clause.

Hi
I have been aware of Martin Lewis's moneysavingexpert.com for what seems like decades, and of the public good done here, and especially by totally committed types like yourself, Coupon-mad.

That said, I just had to write to finally express in writing my absolute horror and disgust that UK has to suffer so many scams associated with total abuse of the wholly unnecessary all encompassing CRA system.  CRA's as exist in UK should never have been tolerated to develop anywhere in this world.  That a scum parking company (they all are) and its associated scum debt collecting agencies, and equally scum lawyers should ever be allowed to wreck an individual's chances of obtaining a mortgage in such ridiculous circumstances, and to use the UK justice system to do it is far more scandalous as a unique UK-ill than PPI ever was.

My daughter is a clever cookie - smarter than most, but she chose to fork out a total of £2,500 to clear off a parking CCJ rather than be bogged down by uncertainty in her busy life with a saga remarkably very similar to the OP's.  Yes she came here to see how the land lies, but ultimately decided to pay all the parking company charges and fees and a lawyer to oversee the job.  It still took her many months before she could apply for a first mortgage with her other half.

There was one difference perhaps - my daughter was displaying a parking permit supplied by her landlord for the small (six or seven places) car park behind the flat she rented for a couple of years.  Sadly the parking permit was not correct in some way and the landlord apologised verbally for that but my daughter was sadly ill-advised at the time with out of date info that she need not worry about a private land parking notice, especially one issued in a car park where she was entitled to park.

She moved twice after that like many young people do as they leave university, and start new jobs and trade-up, and the rest of the story is the same.

My son has just this year received a debt collectors notice relating to a residential block underground car park where he was equally entitled to park.  The "incident" resulting in the notice was around 5 years ago!  He had also ignored initial notices and it seemed to have gone away.

The only reason he got the most recent communication was because he had kept my address for CRA purposes whilst he was moving around between university, internship, first job and subsequently.  He had disposed of the vehicle within 6 months of the "incident"  So it seems the lawyer scum are buying up old files to milk.

So that's two example in the same family where the parking notices and all subsequent actions were based on the fact that they were contractually authorised to park.

In many cases, and I have seen the other side of this from a landlord viewpoint, I feel it is unthinking and uncaring and often scum landlords who are responsible for much of the out of control parking company skimming and scamming, but it is the UK's ridiculous tolerance of scum BPA parking co.s that could not exist without scum CRAs (CRAs simply not tolerated in some more enlightened other countries), and the scum debt collectors and lawyers, that causes so much despair and distress among people who deserve nothing of the kind.

Oh and both my kids also have that other ridiculous saddle courtesy of HMG - the post 2013 Student Loans and the disgusting interest rates associated with those.  In my daughter's case the payment terms meant she has been repaying 15% of salary beyond the thresholds, not 9%, because she did her Masters at a second university.   I just recently gave her the money to clear the postgrad loan to largely avoid a chunk of the effect of the September 2022 increases.  Each with salaries already nearer six-figures than not, my kids will in fact both easily pay off what they borrowed inside the 30 years.  Why Martin Lewis ever got involved in convincing so many to just sign up with SLC, and why he has never actively remonstrated to HMG that those loans were completely missold by any morally acceptable measure, I'll never know. 

Instead of telling the youngsters the loans were not really loans, but like a tax that might never be enough to pay what was borrowed, I think he should instead have concentrated on showing our 17 year old students how they could easily study in EU where in many cases university was free to both local and Brit students, until you-know-what !
 
Even non-repayable cost-of-living grants could have been obtained from some EU governments.  But no, the shallow thinking of the lowest common denominator catered for on the website were as usual fooled into tolerance of what we in UK suffered as "student support" instead..

Apologies for the rant as a first post, but good luck to the OP and countless thousands of others - probably disproportionately made up of younger people who typically move around a lot, who are forced by the UK system to engage for months or years with this CRA threat of CCJ nonsense, or just cough up.in order to regain control of their lives and sleep soundly again.

And meantime, again, thank goodness for helpers like Coiupon-mad.

Coupon-mad

@verdomde I would remove this:

     In that same document:

APPENDIX C, 8(4) The notice must be given by:

(a) handing it to the keeper, or leaving it at a current address for service for the keeper, within the relevant period; or

(b) sending it by post to a current address for service for the keeper so that it is delivered

verdomde

Ah, ok, will do. I put it in as i thought maybe it would highlight that nothing was delivered to my service address, only the DVLA registered keepers address. 
once th as ts find do you think it's good enough to send?

Coupon-mad

Yes. I removed it because it basically dresses up the DVLA address as a valid 'service address' which is the last thing you want the Judge to think!

verdomde

Ok, emailing it all to ccbc@hmcts.gsi.gov.uk

Coupon-mad

verdomde said:

Ok, emailing it all to ccbc@hmcts.gsi.gov.uk

No. We never use that; it's old. That isn't the right email address, AFAIK.

Either use the AQ one in the Template Defence sticky thread first post, or the 'fees' one (when you Google), then phone them up to pay the £275 fee.

verdomde

Thanks, ill ammend

ccbcaq@justice.gov.uk

I also have to delete the second entry in the draft order as its the 4months dead argument. Not sure if i can replace it or just leave the other 2

Coupon-mad

Just leave the other two.

Draft Order stays as a Word doc. The rest as PDFs.