County Court win against Premier Parking Solutions / BW Legal

g1871

I thought I would share my recent success in County Court against Premier Parking Solutions who were represented by BW Legal.  It is so tempting to pay these so-called "fines" despite knowing that they are not entitled to make these claims.  I am posting in the hope that others in a similar situation to mine find this and make the right choice to follow it through to court and not pay unreasonable demands from private companies operating car parks.  Due to the volume and level of pressure, complete with legal threats, it is so tempting to pay before court - but don't if you know you shouldn't - instead follow the advice on this forum and follow the process through.

Short version is that I had paid and parked for 1 hour at Hope Cove Pay and Display car park in Devon and was in the car park for less time than that.  I paid and displayed my ticket.  The machine issued the ticket but failed to log my VRM.  I appealed to PPS and supplied my ticket issued by the machine (they rejected the appeal saying they had "no trace of payment" - despite having a copy of my ticket in their possession!), and then to IAS (again appeal was rejected on the basis they did not have a log of my VRM).  BW Legal were claiming a total of £276.58.

The judge (this is paraphrased) said that the VRM logs could be used to check payments had been made but if any checks then revealed payment had been made then it should be an end to the matter.  He asked the BW Legal representive if he could prove having a full VRM logged was a clear condition of parking and he could not.  As both the defendant and the claimant agreed that payment had been made the claimant's case was dismissed.

The court dismissed the claim and ordered the claimant to pay my costs due to loss of leave (the maximum of £95) plus my travel costs.  These have now been paid to me by BW Legal directly.

Personally I feel it helped that I followed the complete process through, including their internal appeal processes, so I had given them every opportunity to drop their claim before court.  They had full knowledge I had paid but I assume only took it all the way to court in the hope that I would drop out before the court hearing.

Although this was actually very simple - I had paid in full to park and not broken any condition of parking - I would be happy to share further details with anyone in a similar situation as I spent a very long time putting together what I think was a useful witness statement.  

fisherjim

Well done, another example of ANPR not being fit for purpose.

These scamming idiots think they hold all the cards but it is clear that their Micky Mouse systems are unreliable, in this particular case they should have thrown in the towel but they just won't admit they are wrong even when they supply documented evidence of an error, total Muppets.

Coupon-mad

Well done @g1871 - congratulations!  And a very useful court hearing outcome thread for new posters to read and gain confidence from.  Not that scary in real life if you are well prepared.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!

And we sincerely hope that you are au fait with the need to respond to the final Government Public Consultation?  Coming soon.

We all need to bring to an end the false £70 'DRA fee' add-on, that actually funds the court claim and toxic CCJ culture, as well as the DRA and roboclaim 'legals' gaslighting of people.

Please come back here when it opens, and you can make sure you don't miss the Public Consultation:

If you are not a regular reader, to be alerted you'll need to bookmark the thread by MSE_JC at the top of the forum and enable (on your profile) email alerts for bookmarked threads.

Join us when the Consultation opens.

Trainerman

Congratulations, well done. Good report too, which as you suggest might encourage newbies to learn the process and use it .

patient_dream

Well done, you spanked BWLegal

The bit I liked was .... "He asked the BW Legal representive if he could prove having a full VRM logged was a clear condition of parking and he could not".

This will apply to all signs in the UK ... OUCH, could cost the cowboys a fortune and a point for every judge to consider and ask the same question ?

Another learning curve for BWLegal and the rest of them

GoodParker

Excellent result @g1871 - especially since I'm one of an ever-growing group of victims at the very same Hope Cove car park, with the very same ticket machine 'fault' - we are all at various stages of the PPS/IAS/BW Legal charade. It's clear that this is a longstanding 'issue' that PPS profits from tremendously. Of course, PPS have form - just Google Keaton Road PPS and Sunny Corner Mevagissy PPS to get the picture. Anyone else having partial VRN issues with PPS?

Newbsy

I had a similar case with PPS at Hope Cove car park in 2020. I entered my reg number into the machine but only the first letter was recorded on the receipt. I went through the pointless, so called appeals system, with evidence from a friend where exactly the same thing happened, but to no avail. 
So off we went with BW Legal and their merry charade to extract as much money as they could from me. 
The relevant condition of parking was ‘to enter vehicle registration’ (which I did) The point was that the machine only printed the first letter. 
I decided to go to County Court, prepared and presented my defence and when it got to the point where they had to pay something to the County Court, they decided to withdraw the case. No explanation, apology or anything!

So well done to you g1781. I know of a number of people in exactly the same circumstances with PPS and BW Legal, all at Hope Cove. We’re sharing information in support of each other and I’m sure by going to the wire, they’ll win the day!

Coupon-mad

Coupon-mad said:

Well done @g1871 - congratulations!  And a very useful court hearing outcome thread for new posters to read and gain confidence from.  Not that scary in real life if you are well prepared.

ANOTHER ONE BITES THE DUST!

And we sincerely hope that you are au fait with the need to respond to the final Government Public Consultation?  Coming soon.

We all need to bring to an end the false £70 'DRA fee' add-on, that actually funds the court claim and toxic CCJ culture, as well as the DRA and roboclaim 'legals' gaslighting of people.

Please come back here when it opens, and you can make sure you don't miss the Public Consultation:

If you are not a regular reader, to be alerted you'll need to bookmark the thread by MSE_JC at the top of the forum and enable (on your profile) email alerts for bookmarked threads.

Join us when the Consultation opens.

@GoodParker and @Newbsy I hope you are also both ready and waiting for the impending Public Consultation explained above?

You can bet that there will be hundreds of individual (biased) responses from PPC employees and their wives, husbands, parents, pet tortoise et al, all bleating about "the need for parking charges to be high to be a deterrent" and some of them pretending to be consumers or landowners.

We need to drown them out.  Most private parking charges arise unintentionally, by entrapment from crap signage, trickery and calculated reliance on human error, not by design (by the victim at least!).

Therefore, the deterrence idea is irrelevant.

 All real victim voices will be needed.

The final Government Consultation is anticipated in about a month and will only be open for a few weeks.

Newbsy

Bring it on! I did contribute to the previous consultation and have been on local TV to talk about this nonsense. It’s completely absurd that an industry has emerged using legalised chicanery to ‘persuade’ people that it will be better to pay them £60 than suffer 18 months of threats and then possibly court - even when they’ve paid their dues to park.

GoodParker

@Coupon-mad - I will certainly add my voice to any consultation, but (sorry for being a numpty) I don't know where to find "the thread by MSE_JC at the top of the forum" - where is "the forum"? I do think it needs to be easier to find the right post to bookmark...

B789

From any thread you are on, just follow the link below to get to the forum home page. Simples!