Court Defence - Photocopy of permit used so "Not displaying a valid permit"

monktonmead

I have a regular parking spot, and permit to use this spot, but I don't have a regular vehicle.

The parking company (UK Parking Control Limited) have issued a windscreen stickers as permits, which is great for those who own vehicles, but no good for people like me who use a different vehicle each time. To get around this I photocopies of the permit and I put one in each vehicle that I use to park.

Well the inevitable happend, I got a ticket for "not displaying a valid permit" because a photocopy is not considered valid. This has wended its way through the PCN / Popla / Debt-letters cicrcus, and now I have a court appearance.

Can someone guide me on how to defend this, or link me to a similar example that I can copy?

Thanks!

KeithP

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.

Coupon-mad

You'll win or see it discontinued.

Is it DCBLegal?

What's the Date of Issue of the claim?

Emmia

Why don't you put the windscreen sticker on a piece of card, and then you could move it from vehicle to vehicle...

monktonmead

The date of the claim is 20/2/2023, I've not done anything with MCOL yet. I'm going to Do an AOS shortly.

It is with DCB Legal

KeithP

monktonmead said:

The date of the claim is 20/2/2023, I've not done anything with MCOL yet. I'm going to Do an AOS shortly.

With a Claim Issue Date of 20th February, you have until Monday 13th March 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 Monday 27th March 2023 to file your Defence.

That's over 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 guidance.

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'.

Umkomaas

It is with DCB Legal

I thought I'd draw your attention to this fairly recent thread which you might have not yet seen. You must keep going through all the necessary court procedure phases, but the hope is that your case will follow the same pattern as all those detailed in the thread.   

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

monktonmead

Thanks all.

In terms of the defence itself - any idea what I should put down specifically?

Coupon-mad

Given that every thread is about defences, why not read ten or twelve?

You already know (if you have read the 2nd post of the NEWBIES thread as we advised you to) that you will be using the Template Defence and will only need to write one paragraph!

We assume this is "useless" DCBLegal?

Your defence will look like this one (below):
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/comment/79886196/#Comment_79886196

...but with a different paragraph 3 and 4, which in your case will be about the fact you were a resident with a permit and this Claimant has made the residents' lives a misery, and is an attempt to run the site like a commercial car park with an onerous £100 per day penalty clause, aimed at residents who already have a right or easement to park at no risk of extra fees above the service charge.

tacpot12

1. Does the contract you have for your spot allow you to be invoiced for failing to display a valid permit? (Is your parking contract even with UK Parking Control Limited?)

2. Does the contract allow you park a number of different vehicles in the one spot, or does it limit you to a single vehicle and then tell you what to do when you want to change vehicles, such as when you buy a new one? 

3. One possible defence is "The contract allows different vehicles to be parked, and doesn't specify any way to switch permits between different vehicles, so I thought my solution was acceptable, and if it wasn't, they should have told me what I needed to do when I appealed AND they should have allowed the appeal as the contract wasn't clear, so it wasn't clear that I had not complied with it". (I assume that you have a copy of the contract and will put this into the court as evidence.) 

4. If you want to go with a defence of "The permit was valid", I think you have to think about why a photo-copy might be valid, and why it might not be, in the eyes of a judge. Personally, I can't see why you think a photocopy would ever have been valid - if you can just photocopy them, how does this prove that you haven't just let your mate photocopy your permit so they can also park for free?

5. What are you doing now about parking multiple vehicles in the one spot? How has the problem been solved going forwards? Have UKPCL agreed that an acceptable solution has been found? If you now have the permit on a movable item, you might need to think about how this will look in court - are you not just confirming that your first solution was not correct? I don't think you are if you can show that it has taken time for you and UKPCL to come up with the solution, because if it took time, then it supports your argument that the contract wasn't clear at the outset. On the otherhand, if UKPCL's 'solution' was just to tell you where in the contract is said what to do if you had multiple vehicles, this reinforces the idea that you were in breach of contract and should have paid. 

B789

@monktonmead you really MUST read, re-read and read again, the Newbies thread. A simple skim-read will not do. Without understanding the process and the steps involved you will end up being a 1 percenter. It is fairly obvious by what you have posted above that you have not yet fully understood what is required.

You are in the right place for assistance with this but you have to help yourself so that others can help you. It is a steep learning curve and may appear daunting at first. However, persevere and you will eventually understand what is being asked of you.

99% of cases on here that follow the guidance and have read and understood the contents of the Newbies thread near the top of this forum win or are discontinued before they ever get to court. I'll let you figure out why the other 1% fail.