UKPC county court claim

moon_shine89

Ive always been told you can ignore private parking fines and in this instance I have up until the county court claim came through the post! 

I’ve been charged for two parking offences, which I admit to, one in 2019 and the other 2020. One is for over staying and the other leaving the site. 

I’m now faced with a bill of £535 and it seems from the advice I’ve been given I’ll either have to pay up or get a solicitor to help me dispute the fee and pay a lower amount. 

I’m sure a few people must have been in the same situation, what was the outcome? Your advice would be very much appreciated. 

Boat_to_Bolivia

The advice to ignore Private PCN's has not been the case for many years now.

What is the Issue date of your court claim?  Have you filed your AoS, if so on what date?
@KeithP will be along soon to give you some important dates and other information.

What are the circumstances surrounding the issue of these speculative invoices? Where were the car parks?

Which solicitors?

Finally NO paying. You do not need a solicitor, the regulars here provide the best advice you could possibly get.

Coupon-mad

That's bad advice you've been listening to!

But the good news is these are easy to defend (no CCJ risk if you follow our advice) and you certainly don't need a solicitor to see off a small claim from some rogue parking firm!

Who told you that you need a solicitor?!  Don't tell us you asked the (useless for private parking cases) CAB?

Please answer all the above questions from @Boat_to_Bolivia and you'll be on your way to getting our bespoke advice to defend it.

B789

moon_shine89 said:

Ive always been told you can ignore private parking fines and in this instance I have up until the county court claim came through the post! 

I’ve been charged for two parking offences, which I admit to, one in 2019 and the other 2020. One is for over staying and the other leaving the site. 

I’m now faced with a bill of £535 and it seems from the advice I’ve been given I’ll either have to pay up or get a solicitor to help me dispute the fee and pay a lower amount. 

I’m sure a few people must have been in the same situation, what was the outcome? Your advice would be very much appreciated. 

For heavens sake, stop being so gullible and defeatist. You have obviously not read the Newbies/FAQ thread near the top of this forum. Go have a read of that thread, second post in particular for your current situation. You must keep referring back to that thread every time you have a question and use it as a reference.

Why do you just "admit" that you are liable for both the claims? Do you have an intricate knowledge of the law as it pertains to private parking companies? Please have a read of all the documentation you have from these and count the number of times the word "fine" or "penalty" occurs. If it is more than zero, I will eat my hat.

 Why waste your money on  solicitor who will almost certainly know less about the intricacies of the law and contract law surrounding private parking companies that the experts on here? Of all the claims advised on here that are defended robustly using the templates and advice, over 99% are won or discontinued.

Which parking company and which solicitors for your claims? What is the issue date on your claims? Go right now and read the second post in the Newbies/FAQ thread to understand wha you need to to, by when and how to do it.

Ask yourself, did you knowingly overstay at the car park in 2019? Was it obvious, in your face, no way of missing it that you were going to be charged £100 plus damages plus whatever else they have added to the Claim? Was the PCN you received at the time and you ignore PoFA 2012 compliant? If you ignored them, do they know the identity of the driver? At the moment they only know the identity of the Registered Keeper, you. In law, the RK and the driver are two separate entities and liability cannot just be swapped between the two.

Regarding the second claim from 2020 where it is alleged you left the site. How do they know that anyone left the site. What evidence have they provided to prove their case? If anyone left the site, who was it? If a passenger left the site, does that give them any basis for issuing a PCN? Do you know the boundaries of the site? Are they obvious and marked? I could go on but if you are going to have a defeatist attitude, it will not be worthwhile.

Hopefully, by now, you will begin to realise that this is easily defendable and you should not be paying a penny to these scammers and their bottom-dwelling solicitors. You are a part of this scam and you can and should make every effort to show these scammers that you will not be conned by them. Paying them a single penny makes you a part of the scam and just funds them so that they can find more gullible victims to mug.

What your claims are about are two speculative invoices over alleged debts for allegedly breaching their contractual terms. You have no debt unless a judge says you have one.

moon_shine89

Boat_to_Bolivia said:

The advice to ignore Private PCN's has not been the case for many years now.

What is the Issue date of your court claim?  Have you filed your AoS, if so on what date?
@KeithP will be along soon to give you some important dates and other information.

What are the circumstances surrounding the issue of these speculative invoices? Where were the car parks?

Which solicitors?

Finally NO paying. You do not need a solicitor, the regulars here provide the best advice you could possibly get.

The issue date is the 20th April and they said I have 14 days to pay/challenge it.

I’m not familiar with this AoS? 

It was at a retail park and the UKPC manage their parking. It’s free up to 3hours. 

They’re using DCB legal to defend their case and have made various charges against me. Saying that I would pay within 28days but didn’t and that they’re entitled to damages and claimant claims.

I’m going to have a good read of the Newbies FAQ. I absolutely don’t want to pay them anything if I can help it! 

KeithP

moon_shine89 said:

Boat_to_Bolivia said:

The advice to ignore Private PCN's has not been the case for many years now.

What is the Issue date of your court claim?  Have you filed your AoS, if so on what date?
@KeithP will be along soon to give you some important dates and other information.

What are the circumstances surrounding the issue of these speculative invoices? Where were the car parks?

Which solicitors?

Finally NO paying. You do not need a solicitor, the regulars here provide the best advice you could possibly get.

The issue date is the 20th April and they said I have 14 days to pay/challenge it.

I’m not familiar with this AoS? 

With a Claim Issue Date of 20th April, you have until Tuesday 9th May 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 Tuesday 23rd May 2023 to file your Defence.

That's over three 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'.

Le_Kirk

moon_shine89 said:

I’m not familiar with this AoS? 

I’m going to have a good read of the Newbies FAQ. I absolutely don’t want to pay them anything if I can help it! 

See the post above this and you will see that @KeithP has told you that AoS = Acknowledgment of Service and has given you links to the template defence thread and the NEWBIE sticky

Umkomaas

It was at a retail park and the UKPC manage their parking. It’s free up to 3hours. 

They’re using DCB legal to defend their case and have made various charges against me.

In which case, you need to read the following. This is not a prescription for complacency as you will need to go through all the required phases in order to successfully come out the other end with nothing to pay. Research and resilience essential !

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

moon_shine89

Thank you for your support so far, I'm putting my defence together but just wanted to ask a couple of questions about it. I've used the template provided on here but want to know if I need and how to refer to the particulars of the claim?

Would I give a reason in the 3rd person for each particular to why I disagree with what I've been accused off? I will write this in the templates section 3. 

B789

You just put in your version of what you were doing. Just don't put anything that helps the claimant if they've put a sparse, incoherent rubbish PoC. For example, if the PoC just say that you breached the terms of their contract without specifying what exactly you breached, then don't mention anything that does suggest you may have breached something. If they were claiming in their PCN something but it is not mentioned in the PoC, don't remind them that they haven't mentioned what was in the PCN in their PoC.

KeithP

You haven't said, but did you file an Acknowledgment of Service within the timescale allowed?