County Court Claim - Highview Parking / DCB Legal

vwpbbb

Hello to all. I will appreciate if you can please spare sometime to read my post and help and guide me on this.

I received County Court Claim form (attached) dated 01 Sept 2022 for the PCN issued by Highview Parking back in 17/12/2016 for overstaying in Westway Cross Retail Park. I believe I must respond by 19 Sept 2022 (14 days plus 5 additional days). Prior to this I received Letter of Claim from DCB Legal 1 Aug 2022 which I did not respond to. Prior to that I received few other DCB Ltd letters as well which I ignored.

Here is what happened.     

I entered Westway Cross Shopping Park on 17/12/2016 at 13:53 (per ANPR image), however, all the parking spaces managed by Highview Parking were occupied as busy day around Christmas. I parked my car in the L shaped parking area (at right hand side of Mc Donald’s) which is not managed by Highview, but the entrance and exit are same (see pictures). This parking area only states the sign that ‘The landlord accepts no liability for loss or damage to vehicles or contents within this car park. Vehicles parked at owner’s risk’, as can be seen in the picture of the sign board. It does not mention about any parking restriction in term of number of hours. I later spoke to some employees from Wincanton Greenford who park their car every day in that parking area (managed by Capita Symonds) and they mentioned that they park there from morning to the evening over 8 hours during their working shift and that there is no restriction.

After around 17:30 while doing my shopping, I returned to my car and at this time the car parking spaces around the shops managed by Highview were available, hence I moved my car and parked in this parking area until I left the shopping premises at 20:18. In this case I have rightfully parked as a customer within the allowable time of 4 hours in Highview managed parking area and complied with the terms and conditions. In fact, I parked in parking area managed by Capita Symonds from 13:53 to 17:30 (over 3 hours) and then parked my car from 17:30 to 20:18 (under 3 hours) in the parking area managed by Highview. Hence, Highview has wrongly issued me the PCN. I believe Highview despite they have ANPR camera in all the entrances and exits, how is it possible that their camera did not capture the movement of my car to and from their car park to the other car park but it captures the images when my car entered and exited in the main entrance. Seems they either do not want to disclose their full records and images and hide the facts of my claim or their ANPR system is flawed.

I appealed with Highview myself which was unsuccessful then appealed with POPLA which was unsuccessful as well. When appealing with POPLA I paid the PrivateParkingappeals.co.uk and also took their advise. I think this company is no longer there.  

I have read some of the forum contents on County Court which are very informative. I will appreciate if you give me your thoughts if it is worth fighting this and if this is something I can win? The penalty of £60 increased to £100 to £170 and now to £337 after adding interest at 8%.  

Thank you.

Coupon-mad

What a shame you didn't reply to the August LBC as the NEWBIES thread tells everyone to do.

You were this close to timing the court claim out forever and it would have taken 2 emails.

Even more of a shame:

"When appealing with POPLA I paid the PrivateParkingappeals.co.ukand also took their advise."

KeithP

vwpbbb said:

I received County Court Claim form dated 01 Sept 2022 for the PCN issued by Highview Parking back in 17/12/2016 for overstaying in Westway Cross Retail Park. I believe I must respond by 19 Sept 2022 (14 days plus 5 additional days).

With a Claim Issue Date of 1st September, you have until Tuesday 20th September to file an Acknowledgment of Service but there is nothing to be gained by delaying it. 

To file an Acknowledgment of Service, follow the guidance in the Dropbox file linked from the second post in the NEWBIES thread.

Having filed an Acknowledgment of Service in a timely manner, you have until 4pm on Tuesday 4th October 2022 to file your Defence.

That's almost four weeks 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 again at the second post on the NEWBIES thread - immediately following where you found the Acknowledgment of Service instructions.

Don't miss the deadline for filing an Acknowledgment of Service, nor that 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'.

Sebi_895

Ok so whats done is done, you live and learn but learn quickly!
I'm assuming you are going to defend this? You've only asked the following...

I will appreciate if you give me your thoughts if it is worth fighting this and if this is something I can win? The penalty of £60 increased to £100 to £170 and now to £337 after adding interest at 8%.  

I suggest it is worth fighting unless you want to pay £337!

Listen to and pay close attention to what @Coupon-mad and @KeithP tell you - they are the resident experts here. Others will come along too, all with great advice.

If you are going to contest this then lets go...I'm willing to help as currently have a similar one going with, oh look its Highview/DCB Legal as well...

Umkomaas

@vwpbbb - I thought I'd draw your attention to this fairly recent thread which you might have missed. You must keep going through all the necessary court procedure phases, but the hope is that your case will follow the same pattern of all those detailed in the thread. 

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6377263/dcb-legal-record-of-private-parking-court-claim-discontinuations/p1

Not_A_Hope

I suspect they are having a final go at scamming you before the claim times out. The extra cost is to frighten you into paying. You have all the evidence to put up a robust and very believable defence in the eyes of a judge. On the balance of probabilities which is what is required in a small claims court a reasonable judge would find in your favour. 

Umkomaas

a reasonable judge would find in your favour. 

And DCB Legal know that!  Discontinuation on its way in due course. 

vwpbbb

Good morning and thank you all for your swift response and kind advise. Really appreciate your help and it has given me huge morale boost and positive energy to defend. I will be very mindful of the deadlines. I will do some more readings which I know there will be plenty on the above links and will work on preparing my defence statement. If you have any advice and any other direct links apart from the ones you have provided in the above posts, kindly direct me to those. If there are some good examples of defence statement that can help in my preparation, then please direct me to those as well. With all your help, now I feel more confident. Have a great day.

Not_A_Hope

You need to use the template defence and just amend a couple of paragraphs with the bare facts of your particular case. You can post your amended paragraphs on here for comment. 

vwpbbb

I have one question. I have the 23-page evidence pack (some of the pages I uploaded in my first post) which was submitted by Highview to POPLA back in 2017 when I appealed with POPLA. Does the SAR request contain this same information or more information. Do I need to make SAR request and if so, do I request this before I send the defence statement. I think I can use some details from SAR in my defence statement? Not sure how long it will take for Highview to provide me with the SAR. I sold the car back in Feb 2017 so don’t have V5. Thank you.

Not_A_Hope

The SAR should elicit all your ‘personal info’ to date relating to this PCN. It may not offer anything new but I would request one anyway. Perhaps you could be specific about which other ANPR cameras should have picked up your vehicle moving from one car park to another. The other thing is that it will cost the PPC in time and money. They don’t seem to mind wasting yours!

They have 30 days to respond to a SAR so you may receive it until after your defence deadline. No problem as any useful details can be used in the witness statement which comes later.

If you no longer own the car or have the V5C then send them a copy of the letter they have sent you along with a redacted utility bill to prove you are the data subject under GDPR. Don’t send any photo ID such as passport / driving licence.