Do I have a defence - residents parking?

pollysmumanddad

Hi, 

I've navigated my way through the posts and believe I have a defence.   I have received  a county court claim form for 2 pcn's. I was parked without a permit in a residents parking block and received a ticket on 2 occasions. I owned the property but didn't have the permit on display.   We don't have an allocated bay and it's first come first served for parking, but we do have a valid permit.

I'm trying to find an accurate defence to submit, can anyone point me in the right direction? This is what I previously submitted in an appeal but they continued with the claim.

With respect to the 2 PCN notices.  I am writing to disagree with the decisions made to reject the appeal. I am confirming that no contract has been formed and so there is no breach of contract so these tickets won't be paid. I am thereby politely but firmly writing back to request that you rescind the tickets.  Further details below: 

We do not believe we have an obligation to display a permit, and don’t have to pay a parking ‘fine’. We did display a permit out of courtesy but not because we were bound by a contract.  The deeds/lease override any contract my management company may have with a parking company (primacy of contract), and as a property owner with terms in my lease that entitle us to a parking space, there is nowhere in my lease or terms of contract when we purchased the property to infer that we have opted into a parking scheme agreement. The rights to use the parking space on the development have been paid via ground rent and service charges. Since moving into the property, we've made numerous related calls to make ground rent payments and service charge payments but have not been made aware of a parking scheme agreement by the landowner or management company or UKPC.  Please note this is consistent with the following cases Pace v MR N and Link Parking v Ms P where a parking company is unable to override the tenants right to park by requiring a permit to park.  

Also, to this effect, the notices and signage on the site are not clear and sufficient for the purposes, as it does not infer or show a direct connection between your client and the freeholder, neither do they provide notification of a contract, or instructions of and remediation on how to resolve (i.e. how to be a party/non-party to your agreement with the freeholder). As a result, the signage does not create a contract as the notice is forbidding and attempts to displace the terms in my lease.

Finally, the charge is not a genuine pre-estimate of loss, as I do not believe that the £100 fine for each ticket demonstrates an estimate of likely losses. As the person with the ability to park there has been no loss by parking in our space, neither has the landowner suffered as a result of the car being parked here.  We understand that the parking charge must be an estimate of likely losses flowing from the alleged breach in order to be potentially enforceable. 

Fruitcake

What is the issue date of the claim form please?

Submit the AoS on or very shortly after day 6 of the issue date.

DO NOT submit your defence via MCOL. You will send it by email at a later date.

Yes you have a defence. Forget "not a genuine pre-estimate of loss" though. That went out with the infamous Beavis case in 2015.

Primacy of contract and inadequate signage will be your main points to add to the template defence you will find in the sticky Announcements at the top of the main forum page.

Use the guide to court written by bargepole that you will find in the second post of the NEWBIES sticky Announcement, alongside the twelve step guide in the template defence thread.

Ament paragraphs 2 and 3 of the template and show it here before you email it to the CCBC.

pollysmumanddad

Issue date was 3rd august - thank you for taking the time to respond

Fruitcake

Have you done the AoS yet? If not you may need to go straight in with a defence in order to avoid a default judgment. You can construct a defence in under an hour using the template.

pollysmumanddad

Yes - on the 15th august 

KeithP

pollysmumanddad said:

Issue date was 3rd august

Fruitcake said:

Have you done the AoS yet?

pollysmumanddad said:

Yes - on the 15th august 

With a Claim Issue Date of 3rd August, and having filed an Acknowledgment of Service in a timely manner, you have until 4pm on Monday 5th September 2022 to file your Defence.

That's a little 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'.

Coupon-mad

Simply amalgamate the usual Template Defence with parts taken from the residential defence example.

Both clearly linked in the NEWBIES thread post #2.