Gladstone Court Claim - help with defence needed

svgoals

Hi All, afraid to say i have been subjected to a ridiculous parking ticket and the ensuing threats and it has finally got to the stage of a court claim so i am having to act. I have been reading these forums carefully and am nearing the stage that i need to submit my defense. I would appreciate a little advice to make sure my words have maximum impact. 

Very briefly, my ticket is for me parking outside a marked bay.. in a gravel carpark which has terribly marked bays... I arrived when the carpark was vitually full and parked alongside a row of cars lining myself up courteously to allow everyone room to get in and out of the car. Turns out everyone was park astride the bays so i had to as well and they have decided to issue a ticket for that. To add the properties own vehicles are the reason we all had to park outside the 'marked bays' and i have photographic evidence of this  

My defense so far is below.. any advice greatly appreciated.. thanks in advance

3. The defendant parked in the car park owned by South Gloucestershire and Stroud College, to play at the ‘Goals Bristol North’ football leisure league. Car parking is free for all goals users and the defendants car was registered with the venue that evening. The section of the carpark which the defendants car was parked in, is a gravel car park with very poorly defined parking spaces.

4. The defendant was issued a ticket for ‘parking outside of a marked bay’ The defendants car was parked as well as possible within an inadequately and vaguely marked bay while still trying to be courteous to other car park users. Indeed only a small proportion of the defendants car was outside of what might be described as the bay, and certainly was within the carpark itself. The reason the defendants car had to be parked as it was, is because the property owners own mini buses do not fit inside the marked bays, which subsequently leads to all cars following on from this having to park accordingly. When the carpark is made up of roughly marked, gravel bays, and the property owners own vehicles park with apparent disregard for the marked bays, to issue a ticket for this reason in this manner would appear to be a gross abuse of power. 

6. In addition to these mitigating circumstances the signage was poorly lit, with the advice that cars need to be ‘parked within a marked bay’ given no clarity. For a rule to to enforced as stringently as this was on this occasion there should have been much greater guidance as to what parking within a marked bay actually means. Indeed the defendants car is a large estate car and is physically unable to fit into some of the spaces length wise within this car park, similar to many many other examples within the car park of cars not able to fit in the properties crudely marked parking areas. The defendant has parked in this car park nearly every week for a number of years, to play at ‘Goals Bristol North’ and has never been issued with a ticket for this reason  This leads to the clear conclusion that the signage is both unclear and open to personal interpretation when it suits by the parking company, which is deplorable behavior.    

4. This car park is always extremely busy at this time in the evening and there are many instances in the car park where it is not at all clear where the divides are from one space to another.  

KeithP

Hello and welcome.

Often it is wise not to state that the Defendant was driving.
Maybe you have already disclosed the driver's details in an earlier appeal?

Who is the Claimant?

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

Have you filed an Acknowledgment of Service?
If so, upon what date did you do so?
Your MCOL Claim History will have the definitive answer to that.

svgoals

Hi there, thanks for your help 

I haven't disclosed i was the driver previously, so i can remove that if you think that would be better.

Claimant is UK Car park Management. 

Yes i filed the acknowledgement of service on the the 10th Aug. 

Johnersh

Try again. 

1. You either saw the signs or you didn't. 

2. You either parked seeing the bays,  but couldn't park any differently/decided to chance it/were within the bay OR you did not see any marked bays at all.

3. You can't easily protest the signs were rubbish,  when you went to the trouble of complying with the terms - registering the car and checking/seeing that it was free.... 

Factually it's contradictory and less than compelling. 

KeithP

svgoals said:

Hi there, thanks for your help 

I haven't disclosed i was the driver previously, so i can remove that if you think that would be better.

Claimant is UK Car park Management. 

Yes i filed the acknowledgement of service on the the 10th Aug. 

And my other question?...

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

svgoals

KeithP said:

svgoals said:

Hi there, thanks for your help 

I haven't disclosed i was the driver previously, so i can remove that if you think that would be better.

Claimant is UK Car park Management. 

Yes i filed the acknowledgement of service on the the 10th Aug. 

And my other question?...

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

yes sorry, 9/8

KeithP

Are you sure about those dates?
You have told us the Claim was issued on 9th August and you received the Claim the very next day and filed an Acknowledgment of Service before 4pm on 10th August.

Please check you MCOL Claim History.

These dates are critical. They determine when your Defence filing is due.

svgoals

Johnersh said:

Try again. 

1. You either saw the signs or you didn't. 

2. You either parked seeing the bays,  but couldn't park any differently/decided to chance it/were within the bay OR you did not see any marked bays at all.

3. You can't easily protest the signs were rubbish,  when you went to the trouble of complying with the terms - registering the car and checking/seeing that it was free.... 

Factually it's contradictory and less than compelling. 

As you can probably tell i haven't done this before...

I've never read the signs as the registration is handled by the football facility, at the point i tap my number plate into the touch screen there is no signage or advice about how the car i'm registering should be parked. That's all handled by goals we don't interact with anything to do with the car park, signs, machines etc... We just got told one day, now the car park is managed you need to register your car, which i started to do.. was all so simple until this rubbish came through.  

I certainly couldn't have parked any differently to how i did, or I'd have driven into another car. 

svgoals

KeithP said:

Are you sure about those dates?
You have told us the Claim was issued on 9th August and you received the Claim the very next day and filed an Acknowledgment of Service before 4pm on 10th August.

Please check you MCOL Claim History.

These dates are critical. They determine when your Defence filing is due.

Copy and paste from portal Claim History: 

A claim was issued against you on 09/08/2022

Your acknowledgment of service was submitted on 10/08/2022 at 15:56:18

Your acknowledgment of service was received on 11/08/2022 at 08:06:30

The original ticket was Issued April 2021.

KeithP

With a Claim Issue Date of 9th August, and having filed an Acknowledgment of Service on 11th August, you have until 4pm on Thursday 8th September 2022 to file your Defence.

That's over two weeks away. Plenty of time to produce a Defence and it is good to see you are not leaving 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'.

Coupon-mad

registration is handled by the football facility, at the point i tap my number plate into the touch screen there is no signage or advice about how the car i'm registering should be parked. That's all handled by goals we don't interact with anything to do with the car park, signs, machines etc...

We just got told one day, now the car park is managed you need to register your car, which i started to do.

Sounds fine - needs to be in your defence para 3 but of course changed to 'The Defendant did this/that' not "I".