private parking ticket - county court claim stage / questions regarding BPA's code of practice

blackmasked

My circumstances are as follows:

I got a ticket from PPS, member of BPA, for parking on a free parking in front of the store.
Ticket was for not clearly displaying a parking permit. Said permit has to be obtained from the store.

I appealed, but they never responded, then I went through a period of ignoring all of the letters. I recently received a county court claim form.

I have a questions regarding BPA's code of practice.
I cannot post the link but the document I'm referring to is as follows:
AOS_Code_of_Practice_January_2020_v8(2).pdf

Specifically, page 9, paragraph 13 and whether or not it can be applied in my case.

13.1 "The driver must have the chance to consider the Terms
and Conditions before entering into the ‘parking contract’
with you. If, having had that opportunity, the driver
decides not to park but chooses to leave the car park,
you must provide them with a reasonable consideration
period to leave, before the driver can be bound by your
parking contract. The amount of time in these instances
will vary dependant on site size and type but it must be a
minimum of 5 minutes."

I have a dash cam evidence clearly showing when I entered the car park and when I left.
Time difference before me parking the car and the time PCN picture was taken is less than 5 minutes states above.
In theory I could use paragraph 13.1 as my defense.

Also, I stayed in the car park for a total of 9 minutes.

There are references in the code of practice to paid car parks but not ones that are free, which is not helpful.

Do I have a leg to stand on?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Fruitcake

Follow the guide to court written by bargepole that you will find in the second post of the NEWBIES sticky Announcement in conjunction with the Template Defence sticky Announcement that includes a twelve step guide.

BPA CoP failures will be one of your many defence points.

Plan A is always a complaint to the landowner and your MP. What happened when you did that?

Get photos of the site and signage and send an SAR asap to the DPO of PPS. (Please confirm the full name of the PPC as there are several with similar initials.) You will need to include non-photo proof of ID with your SAR.

Acronyms and abbreviations can be found in the fifth post of the NEWBIES sticky Announcement.

blackmasked

Thanks for the info.

PPS as in Private Parking Solutions (London) Ltd.

I never contacted the landowner and/or my MP.

Fruitcake

blackmasked said:

Thanks for the info.

PPS as in Private Parking Solutions (London) Ltd.

I never contacted the landowner and/or my MP.

It is always Plan A, and it is not to late to do so.

KeithP

blackmasked said:

I recently received a county court claim form.

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.

blackmasked

KeithP said:

blackmasked said:

I recently received a county court claim form.

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.

12th of September and I have not filed anything yet. At the moment I'm considering my options.

blackmasked

Apologies for double post but I cannot edit anything at the moment.

I've had a friendly chat with a parking attendant yesterday. According to him ANPR cameras are responsible for keeping track of everyone entering and leaving the car park. Also, as per BPA code of conduct point 13.1 I have 5 minutes to get permit and display it. He claims that the countdown starts from the moment I enter the car park, not the moment I park the car.

That does not sit right with me, and I wonder anyone could confirm whether that’s the case or not? After all, you could spend few minutes searching for a parking spot and that should not count towards the grace period.

KeithP

blackmasked said:

KeithP said:

blackmasked said:

I recently received a county court claim form.

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.

12th of September and I have not filed anything yet. At the moment I'm considering my options.

With a Claim Issue Date of 12th September, you have until Monday 3rd October to file an Acknowledgment of Service. Do not file an Acknowledgment of Service before 17th September, but otherwise there is nothing to be gained by delaying it. 
I'll repeat that sentence as I wrote it on another thread earlier today and for some reason was overlooked...
Do not file an Acknowledgment of Service before 17th September, but otherwise 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 Monday 17th October 2022 to file your Defence.

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

Fruitcake

blackmasked said:

Apologies for double post but I cannot edit anything at the moment.

I've had a friendly chat with a parking attendant yesterday. According to him ANPR cameras are responsible for keeping track of everyone entering and leaving the car park. Also, as per BPA code of conduct point 13.1 I have 5 minutes to get permit and display it. He claims that the countdown starts from the moment I enter the car park, not the moment I park the car.

That does not sit right with me, and I wonder anyone could confirm whether that’s the case or not? After all, you could spend few minutes searching for a parking spot and that should not count towards the grace period.

Start with, unregulated private parking companies and their employers tell lies, and a parking trade association is not a regulatory body, and their CoP exists only to support the PPC, and you won't go far wrong.

There is case law such as Thornton vs Shoe Lane and HMRC vs NCP that cover "when the clock starts", which you should include in your defence.
There are other cases where judges have stated that driving around looking for a space isn't parking as well, including ParkingEye v Ms X. (Altrincham 17/03/2014), case number 3JD08399

Coupon-mad

blackmasked said:

Apologies for double post but I cannot edit anything at the moment.

I've had a friendly chat with a parking attendant yesterday. According to him ANPR cameras are responsible for keeping track of everyone entering and leaving the car park. Also, as per BPA code of conduct point 13.1 I have 5 minutes to get permit and display it. He claims that the countdown starts from the moment I enter the car park, not the moment I park the car.

That does not sit right with me, and I wonder anyone could confirm whether that’s the case or not? After all, you could spend few minutes searching for a parking spot and that should not count towards the grace period.

Technically correct but rebuttable based on circumstances.  There is no dilemma nor any options to weigh up!

Defending costs you nothing at all - and we win or see cases discontinued in 99% of cases we help with, and that's been consistent since 2016.

Absolutely simple and risk-free  to defend.

blackmasked

I've dealt with SAR and Acknowledgment of Service. So far so good.

I've also engaged in a bit of trickery and found out that the car park in question does not use ANPR. I've got that in writing from people working at company.

Also there claim they have no record of me entering or leaving the cark park on that faithful day.

More on that later.

In the meantime I also got myself some more video evidence that could be handy. I have a recording of the same parking attendant who got me snapping pictures of a delivery driver.

Wouldn't be that exciting if not for the fact, that he started 'enforcement' within 2 minutes of the amazon guy leaving his car.

Pretty reprehensible considering that the grace period is at least 5 minutes.

Going back to the video evidence. As I said in my initial post, I have dash cam footage that shows when I entered and left the car park, including time stamps.

Also thanks to the SAR I now know that the first picture taken by the parking attendant was taken just over 5 minutes after I left the car.

Over 5 minute grace period, however the time between my dashcam and their equipment is obviously not synced. That means that they could have started snapping pictures of my car after 4, 5 or 6 minutes. It’s not possible to establish that.

As they have no record of me entering or leaving, it is impossible for them to prove beyond reasonable doubt that they waited for more than 5 minutes, like they should have.

I'm a bit conflicted whethey or not I should be using this as part of my defence. Should I, or would I be incriminating myself?

Video footage showing amazon guy getting done sounds great, but I feel that it doesn't really work if not used in conjunction with my own.

Would evidence above plus what's in the template be enough for me to wriggle out of this?

Thanks in advance for any advice.