County Court: Parking Fine Defence

DefenderAvenger

Hi all, 

I was hoping to get some help/feedback with my defence. Having read the newbie guides etc. I think I have an inkling of some sort as to what I am doing so thank you for that!

In a nutshell: received a PCN for parking outside of a bay from Premier Parking Ltd (Gladstone Solicitors). I had no choice but to park there as it was quite possibly the last spot in the car park. This event took place mid 2022. The adjacent cars were also parked out of their bays, not by much but enough to force me out of my bay. Did not take much notice of the PCN as figured just a scam as per usual. Got married same month, went on honeymoon and then moved out of family home (all within 1.5 months after PCN). Did not see any correspondence until visited home and found bunch of letters unopened. By this time I had a county court claim letter. Issue Date: 10th March, Service date: 15th March and acknowledgment of service submitted so deadline for defence is 12th of April if I am not mistaken! From what I recall, I was issued £100 for the fine, no early payment discount either. Now claiming nearly triple that.

Also, the online MCOL portal for submitting the defence only allows 122 lines. The defence template has much more than this. Should I submit via email as instructed by KeithP's thread? 

My defence is as follows (kept date and times out for anonymity? not sure how anon I had to be!)

1. The parking charges referred to in this claim did not arise

from any agreement of terms. The charge and the claim was an

unexpected shock. The Defendant denies that the Claimant is

entitled to relief in the sum claimed, or at all.  It is denied

that any conduct by the driver was a breach of any prominent term

and it is denied that this Claimant (understood to have a bare

licence as managers) has standing to sue or form contracts in

their own name. Liability is denied, whether or not the Claimant

is claiming 'keeper liability', which is unclear from the

Particulars.

2. It is admitted that the Defendant was the registered keeper and

driver of the vehicle.

3. The Defendant had purchased three hours of parking at 00:00 am

on the 00th of July 2022 for wedding shopping with partner. One

spot remained in the car park in which the Defendant reverse

parked in. The Defendant returned to the car park at approximately

00:00 am, 41 minutes prior to the expiration of the parking period.

The Defendant discovered the PCN for parking outside the bay. The

cars adjacent to the Defendant’s car were slightly out of their

bays prior to the Defendants arrival. Thus, resulting in the

Defendant to also be slightly out of the bay. The bay lines were

also deteriorating due to age and were not long enough therefore

easily missed by the Defendant. The signage was placed on the wall

behind the car with very small font. The Defendant exited the car

and was facing away from all signage automatically and therefore

unaware of the terms and conditions. The Defendant had wedding

celebrations that spanned across the whole month and also went on

honeymoon on the 00th July and returned on  00th August. The

Defendant moved out of his house on the 00th August. The Defendant

did not receive any correspondence due to this and only realised

once visiting the family home in which all correspondence had been

left unopened.

4. The facts in this defence come from the Defendant's own

knowledge and honest belief.  To pre-empt the usual template

responses from this serial litigator: the court process is outside

of the Defendant's life experience and they cannot be criticised

for using, in part, pre-written wording suggested by a reliable

online help resource. The Claimant is urged not to patronise the

Defendant with (ironically template) unfounded accusations of not

understanding their defence.

5. With regard to template statements, the Defendant observes

after researching other parking claims, that the Particulars of

Claim ('POC') set out a cut-and-paste incoherent statement of

case.  In breach of the pre-action protocol for 'Debt' Claims, no

copy of the contract (sign) accompanied any Letter of Claim.  The

POC is sparse on facts and specific breach allegations, which

makes it difficult to respond in depth at this time; however this

claim is unfair, generic and inflated.

6.  This Claimant continues to pursue a disproportionate fixed sum

(routinely added per PCN) despite knowing that this is now likely

to be confirmed as banned by the Government this year. It is

denied that the purported 'damages' or 'debt fee' sought was

incurred or is recoverable. Attention is drawn to paras 98, 100,

193, 198 of ParkingEye Ltd v Beavis [2015] UKSC67.  Also

ParkingEye Ltd v Somerfield Stores Ltd ChD [2011] EWHC 4023(QB)

where the parking charge was £75, discounted to £37.50 for prompt

payment.  Whilst £75 was reasonable, HHJ Hegarty (sitting at the

High Court; later ratified by the CoA) held in paras 419-428 that

unspecified 'admin costs' inflating it to £135 'would appear to be

penal'.

7. This finding is underpinned by the Government, who stated in

2022 that attempts to gild the lily by adding 'debt recovery

costs' were 'extorting money'.  The Department for Levelling Up,

Housing and Communities ('DLUHC') published in February 2022, a

statutory Code of Practice, found here:

https:// www .gov.uk /government /publications /private -parking -code -of-practice

8. Whilst the new Code is temporarily stalled for a final Impact

Assessment, it is anticipated that adding false costs/damages or

'fees' to enhance a parking charge claim is likely to remain

banned. In a section called 'Escalation of costs' the (stalled but

incoming in 2023) statutory Code of Practice says: ‘The parking

operator must not levy additional costs over and above the level

of a parking charge or parking tariff as originally issued.’

9. The Code's Ministerial Foreword is unequivocal about abusive

existing cases such as this claim: ‘Private firms issue roughly

22,000 parking tickets every day, often adopting a labyrinthine

system of misleading and confusing signage, opaque appeals

services, aggressive debt collection and unreasonable fees

designed to extort money from motorists.’

10. The DLUHC consulted for over two years, considering evidence

from a wide range of stakeholders.  Almost a fifth of all

respondents to the 2021 Technical Consultation called for false

fees to be scrapped altogether; this despite the parking industry

flooding both public consultations, some even masquerading as

consumers.  Genuine consumer replies pointed out that successful

debt recovery does not trigger court proceedings and the

debt/robo-claim firms operate on a 'no win, no fee' basis, seeking

to inflate these claims with 'costs/damages' in addition to the

strictly capped legal fees the small claims track allows.

11. This Claimant has not incurred any additional costs (not even

for reminder letters) because the parking charge more than covers

what the Supreme Court in Beavis called an 'automated

letter-chain' business model that generates a healthy profit.  In

Beavis, there were 4 or 5 letters including reminders.  The

parking charge was held to cover that work.

12. The driver did not agree to pay a parking charge, let alone

these unknown costs, which were not quantified in prominent text

on signage.

13. Whilst the new Code and Act is not retrospective, it was

enacted due to the failure of the self-serving BPA & IPC Codes of

Practice.  The Minister is indisputably talking about existing

(not future) cases when declaring that 'recovery' fees were

'designed to extort money'.  A clear steer for the Courts which it

is hoped overrides mistakes made in a few appeal cases that the

parking industry desperately rely upon (Britannia v

Semark-Jullien, One Parking Solution v Wilshaw, Vehicle Control

Services v Ward and Vehicle Control Services v Percy).

14.  Far from being persuasive, regrettably these one-sided

appeals saw Circuit Judges led in one direction by Counsel for

parking firms, and the litigant-in-person consumers lacked the

wherewithal to appeal. In case this Claimant tries to rely upon

these, the Defendant avers that errors were made in every case.

Evidence was either overlooked (including signage discrepancies in

Wilshaw, where the Judge was also oblivious to the BPA Code of

Practice and the DVLA KADOE requirement for landowner authority)

or the Judge inexplicably sought out and quoted from the wrong

Code altogether (Percy).  In Ward, a few seconds' emergency stop

out of the control of the driver was unfairly aligned with the

admitted parking contract in Beavis. Those learned Judges were not

in possession of the same level of information as the DLUHC, whose

incoming statutory Code of Practice now clarifies such matters as........ (122 lines end here)

I know time is of the essence and apologies for this! But any advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

Regards,

DefenderAvenger

DefenderAvenger

Car Park was a private pay and display.

tacpot12

... One spot remained in the car park in which the Defendant reverse parked in. 

also 

The cars adjacent to the Defendant’s car were slightly out of their bays prior to the Defendants arrival.

I think you need to be careful about how you word these parts of your defence. If you had said "one space" rather than "one spot", the judge might reasonably ask how you knew that it was a space that was available for parking. Saying "one spot" seems less open to such a question, but I wonder if there is a better way of explaining how you determined that there was space for you to park your particlar vehicle, e.g. "I saw a space that was large enough to park my car safely, and saw no indication that parking was not allowed in the area, so I parked my car carefully between the adjacent vehicle and the xxx (whatever xxx was)". 

Saying that the lines were not long enough to be see needs some explanation and qualification. Is your car longer than 5m? If your car is a small or mid size car, or large but not execessively so, then I would mention this. I would also mention how long the line were.

If the other cars completely covered the lines that showed were the bays were (because the lines were also shorter than these cars, and under them because of their parking), this is ideal, but you will be reliant on the photographs that the parking company has supplied. Check them carefully to see what they do and don't show. 

Saying that the adjacent cars were out of their bays seems like you are trying to justify parking outside of your bay. So, unless you are saying that they completely covered their lines, so you didn't even realise that they were parked in bays, then I think this is a bad idea. If you knew they they were close enough to the space you were trying to park in to push you into the next bay or an area that was marked as unavailable for parking, you shouldn't have tried to park, but if the incursion was very slight and it was not into another bay, then it would be reasonable to expect not to receive a PCN of for the appeal process to have let you off.  Do you have photos of the area you did park into (that you have taken)? Does it look like it is an area is needed for safe manouvering? Does the angle that the parking company's photo has of your parking tend to exacerbate the impact of your incursion, or does it minimise it?  

Is it part of your contention that the owner didn't lose anything by you parking outside of the bay? i.e. that you weren't parking partially in another bay, or blocking off an area needed for safe manouvering? If so, do you have evidence of this? If you made the car park less safe, the claimant might win on this technicality, so you need to minimise the effect of the incursion.   

I'm not sure I would mention your wedding. Are you wanting sympathy, or pleading povity due to having spent all your money on the wedding?    It also allows Gladstone solicitor to suggest that you were in a rush, and/or intent on parking in that car park at any cost. Your assertion that it was possibly the last space in the car park also indicates that you were tense and desperate to park. This is not good.

B789

DefenderAvenger said:

Also, the online MCOL portal for submitting the defence only allows 122 lines. The defence template has much more than this. Should I submit via email as instructed by KeithP's thread? 

You need to go back and re-read the Newbies/FAQ thread to refresh yourself on how to submit your Defence. If you put so much as a full stop in the MCOL Defence box, you will be screwed.

You only need to show us the bits you have added/edited in the defence template. Every paragraph needs to be numbered sequentially and no need for sub-numbering. Simple 1, 2, 3 etc.

tacpot12

Reflecting on my post, I think your best defence is that your failure to park in the marked bay was so trivial as to make a mockery of bringing the case to court AND/OR that the bays were not correctly marked - you can try both defences (you only need one defence to work). 

DefenderAvenger

Okay thank you for your help. I will revise my defence accordingly and share it again on this thread before sending it off! I do not have much picture evidence apart from a picture of how much the adjacent car was out of his bay . Bit dumb of me looking back at it now. To my knowledge, the claimant has not provided me with any pictures either. 

DefenderAvenger

Adjacent car out of their bay. So I did not see the bay line because of this. There was enough space to park my car without causing issue for any other party.

Coupon-mad

I would not be responding to an allegation that isn't in the particulars of claim.  We say this a lot.  The claim doesn't say you were parked out of bay lines does it?  So there is no such specific allegation pleaded and you do not need to go into detail.

(I am not talking about the PCN. We know that said parking out of bay lines).

Premier Parking Ltd

No such company.  Please tell us who it is?

Why not just copy the style of the other Gladstones case defence right near yours this afternoon, and include the fact there is no specified allegation of breach and that you object to the 10.25% interest.

This is already written in one I just read ten minutes ago.

DefenderAvenger

Just says vehicle parked in breach of the terms of parking stipulated on the signage etc. 

Sorry, the company is Premier Parking Enforcement Ltd. 

Okay perfect. I shall have a look.

KeithP

DefenderAvenger said:

I had a county court claim letter. Issue Date: 10th March, Service date: 15th March and acknowledgment of service submitted so deadline for defence is 12th of April if I am not mistaken!

Assuming you filed an Acknowledgment of Service sometime after 14th March and before 30th March, then you are correct with you Defence filing deadline.

With a Claim Issue Date of 10th March, and having filed an Acknowledgment of Service in a timely manner, you have until 4pm on Wednesday 12th April 2023 to file your Defence.

That's tomorrow.

To create a Defence, and then file a Defence by email, look at the second post in the NEWBIES thread.

Don't miss the deadline 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'.

Coupon-mad

Sorry, the company is Premier Parking Enforcement Ltd. 

Is it? I expected it to be Premier Park Ltd!  Glad I asked.

Anyway go read today's updated court claim threads and find the Gladstones one that covers the 10.25% issue.

Or just search the forum for that percentage and the word Gladstones change to 'NEWEST'.