CCBC Claim form received today for One Parking Solutions Vantage Point Brighton - defence advice pls

Coupon-mad

KeithP did not advise you to put the defence in at the last minute:

 you have until 4pm on Tuesday 1st November 2022 to file your Defence. That's over four weeks away. Plenty of time to produce a Defence and it is good to see you are not leaving it to the last minute.

We haven't seen your planned paragraphs 2 onwards for review yet, have we?

bastos

Hi thanks coupon-mad, I have made some amendments based on your earlier feedback and now have the following drafted for paragraphs 2 and 3.....

 

2. It is admitted that the Defendant was the registered keeper and driver of the vehicle in question.

 

3.

1) On 12th December the Defendant entered the Vantage Point car park in Brighton at 1:58:56 pm driving her silver VW Golf registration E***** This vehicle had been purchased by the Defendant 2 months previously to this date. It was underground and very dark and the Defendant went up to the ticket machine to determine how to pay for the parking. The Defendant could see the mention of the Just Park parking app on the sign but the lighting was too poor to read any detailed T&Cs. The parking payment machine is located right at the back of the car park where there is no natural lighting at all. The Defendant returned to the vehicle to process the parking app payment on her mobile phone. The area was poorly lit whilst the Defendant was processing her payment for the initial parking period of 14:06 until 17:07 but managed to complete the transaction and the parking period was confirmed with Booking reference 30408797. This parking period cost the Defendant £5.17. Whilst the Defendant was shopping a reminder appeared on the app that the parking period was about to expire and she then processed an extension to the parking period of a further 2 hours until 19:16 which cost her £3.47 and was Booking reference 30413886. The total amount that the Defendant paid to park in the Vantage Point car park on 12th December was £8.64. The Defendant exited the carpark at 19:15, this was 1 minute before the paid parking period on the app ended.

 

2) On 21st December the Defendant received a ‘notice to keeper parking charge notice’ stating that there was a charge of £100 (reduced to £60 on quick payment) owed for the vehicle E*****. The Defendant looked at the app to confirm the payment from that date and saw that the app still had her previous vehicle G****** registered as she had not used the app since purchasing the new vehicle E*****. The Defendant had not noticed this administrative error when making the payment in the car park on the 12th December but felt satisfied that she had paid to park a vehicle on the premises for the entire duration stated. The Defendant felt confident that any reasonable parking provider would realise that full parking payment had been made and that this was an admin error and would cancel the parking charge notice. The Defendant submitted an appeal on 21st December to One Parking Solutions, but this appeal was unsuccessful and the Parking Company only offered to reduce the charge to £20 from £60 but only on condition that the Defendant agreed not to appeal to POPLA and immediately pay the charge. The Defendant felt this was unfair and attempting to prevent the public from pursuing a fair and independent appeals process which they should be entitled to. Therefore the Defendant decided that she wished to appeal to POPLA as this was a genuine administration error where she had paid for a vehicle to be parked for the entire length of time that it was parked. Any checks of CCTV would have demonstrated that the old vehicle was not parked in the car park and therefore full payment had been made by the driver to the landowner.

 

3) The Defendant appealed to POPLA and submitted evidence from the JustPark app demonstrating the payments and times they were made. The appeals process by POPLA was not successful and the charge was hence reverted back to the higher rate of £60. The POPLA email notification of the negative outcome of the appeal stated that it had a link to pay the charge with the parking operator, however this link did not work and took the Defendant back to a POPLA appeal form page https://appealform.popla.co.uk . Upon notifying POPLA of this error by email they replied to the Defendant denying that they provide links for payment. This conflicting information by POPLA made payment of the charge challenging.  

 

4) The Defendant did not feel that it was fair to penalise an individual purely for wishing evidence to be independently reviewed and agreed to pay the reduced £20 charge for her original admin error. However One Parking Solutions returned the cheque and quoted the statement that ‘should you choose to use the POPLA service you will no longer be entitled to pay the lower rate of charge’. This decision by One Parking Solution to refuse and return the payment of the £20 charge therefore forced the Defendant to have to proceed with court action to have a fair process for this situation to be heard in.

 

Thankyou so much for reading.

Umkomaas

bastos said:

So I've not had anything back from the SARS request to the operator OPS which I sent on the 4th October and nothing back from DCB Legal email notifying them of the SARS request which I sent on 5th October.

I've completed the Acknowledgment of Service so I don't need to do anything now other than prepare my defence ready to submit on 1st November? 

Is that correct? 

Thanks in anticipation

The PPC has 30 days to respond to a SAR (not SARS - that's a nasty disease!), and they're likely to take every one of the days, so no point in sweating on that so early in the process. 

DCB Legal have no requirement placed on them to respond to you on that. If you've asked for 30 days 'hold' while you await a SAR response, you won't get it at all. If you've asked for the 'hold' to receive 'debt advice', they are required to provide it, but no requirement to confirm that to you. They will likely tell you when the deadline is reached, followed very rapidly by a claim!

bastos

Umkomaas said:

DCB Legal have no requirement placed on them to respond to you on that. If you've asked for 30 days 'hold' while you await a SAR response, you won't get it at all. If you've asked for the 'hold' to receive 'debt advice', they are required to provide it, but no requirement to confirm that to you. They will likely tell you when the deadline is reached, followed very rapidly by a claim!

Excellent thats really helpful thankyou. Yes I used the exact wording in the Newbies thread advice so I did mention 'debt advice'. Useful to know I won't hear anything nor from OPS until the 30 days is up. 

So apologies for my confusion, but does that change the 1st November date for defence submission or not? As in I'd like to see the info from the SAR request before I submit my defence but I may not get it before then if they take the full 30 days. 

KeithP

bastos said:

Umkomaas said:

DCB Legal have no requirement placed on them to respond to you on that. If you've asked for 30 days 'hold' while you await a SAR response, you won't get it at all. If you've asked for the 'hold' to receive 'debt advice', they are required to provide it, but no requirement to confirm that to you. They will likely tell you when the deadline is reached, followed very rapidly by a claim!

So apologies for my confusion, but does that change the 1st November date for defence submission or not? As in I'd like to see the info from the SAR request before I submit my defence but I may not get it before then if they take the full 30 days. 

Your Defence filing deadline is set in stone. It will not change simply because you have sent a Data Subject Access Request to the Claimant.

The response to your SAR will be far more useful at Witness Statement time anyway.

Coupon-mad

I think there is too much info in that defence. You don't need to talk about POPLA and certainly not that the 'pay' link didn't work because that suggests you wanted to pay and accepted liability.

bastos

That’s super helpful KeithP and Coupon mad, thanks so much for your comments and feedback. I will amend. 

bastos

Following your comments this is my final defence statement which I shall be submitting later today unless anyone feels I need to amend anything else? I've removed quite a bit of the detail as recommended above. Really very grateful for everyones help

1) On 12th December the Defendant entered the Vantage Point car park in Brighton at 1:58:56 pm driving her silver VW Golf registration **. This vehicle had been purchased by the Defendant 2 months previously to this date. It was underground and very dark and the Defendant went up to the ticket machine to determine how to pay for the parking. The Defendant could see the mention of the Just Park parking app on the sign but the lighting was too poor to read any detailed T&Cs. The parking payment machine is located right at the back of the car park where there is no natural lighting at all. The Defendant returned to the vehicle to process the parking app payment on her mobile phone. The Defendant processed her payment for the initial parking period of 14:06 until 17:07 and managed to complete the transaction and the parking period was confirmed with Booking reference 30408797. This parking period cost the Defendant £5.17. Whilst the Defendant was shopping a reminder appeared on the app that the parking period was about to expire and she then processed an extension to the parking period of a further 2 hours until 19:16 which cost her £3.47 and was Booking reference 30413886. The total amount that the Defendant paid to park in the Vantage Point car park on 12th December was £8.64. The Defendant exited the carpark at 19:15, this was 1 minute before the paid parking period on the app ended.

 

2) On 21st December the Defendant received a ‘notice to keeper parking charge notice’ stating that there was a charge of £100 (reduced to £60 on quick payment) owed for the vehicle ***. The Defendant looked at the app to confirm the payment from that date and saw that the app still had her previous vehicle *** registered as she had not used the app since purchasing the new vehicle ***. The Defendant had not noticed this administrative error when making the payment in the car park on the 12th December but felt satisfied that she had paid to park a vehicle on the premises for the entire duration stated. The Defendant felt confident that any reasonable parking provider would realise that full parking payment had been made and that this was an admin error and would cancel the parking charge notice. The Defendant submitted an appeal on 21st December to One Parking Solutions, but this appeal was unsuccessful and the Parking Company only offered to reduce the charge to £20 from £60 but only on condition that the Defendant agreed not to appeal to POPLA and immediately pay the charge. The Defendant felt this was unfair and attempting to prevent the public from pursuing a fair and independent appeals process which they should be entitled to. Therefore the Defendant decided that she wished to appeal to POPLA as this was a genuine administration error where she had paid for a vehicle to be parked for the entire length of time that it was parked. Any checks of CCTV would have demonstrated that the old vehicle was not parked in the car park and therefore full payment had been made by the driver to the landowner.

 

3) The Defendant appealed to POPLA and submitted evidence from the JustPark app demonstrating the payments and times they were made. The appeals process by POPLA was not successful and the charge was hence reverted back to the higher rate of £60.

Coupon-mad

Can I check that's not your entire defence and that you aren't intending to just put that (alone) into the 'start defence' box on MCOL that we advise people never to even put a full stop in?

You are using the forum's Template Defence in full, and have amended para 2 to state you were also the driver, and the above is merely your draft para 3 addition?

Remove all this, too much info for defence stage:

"and the Parking Company only offered to reduce the charge to £20 from £60 but only on condition that the Defendant agreed not to appeal to POPLA and immediately pay the charge. The Defendant felt this was unfair and attempting to prevent the public from pursuing a fair and independent appeals process which they should be entitled to. Therefore the Defendant decided that she wished to appeal to POPLA as this was a genuine administration error where she had paid for a vehicle to be parked for the entire length of time that it was parked. Any checks of CCTV would have demonstrated that the old vehicle was not parked in the car park and therefore full payment had been made by the driver to the landowner. 

 3) The Defendant appealed to POPLA and submitted evidence from the JustPark app demonstrating the payments and times they were made. The appeals process by POPLA was not successful and the charge was hence reverted back to the higher rate of £60."

bastos

Thanks so much Coupon-mad. Yes apologies, I having been following all the guidance and this is only my section 3 from the defence statement.

Really appreciate your comments, I will delete all the above, and then is it OK to send as I'd like to get it off today with a deadline of tomorrow at 4pm? Thankyou