Asking for a friend

KennyMc157

Hi guys. With some brilliant help and advice from you good people, I was able (despite an almighty blunder on my part) to win my own case against VCS/DCB Legal last year. A colleague has fallen foul of the same rotten duo, by virtue of having ignored 4 penalty notices from the same area I picked up my own, over a period from 03/01/18 to 01/11/18. I have offered to help as much as I can and have started her on the basics (Request a 30 day pause from DCB in lieu of her obtaining debt advice and submitting a SAR to VCS).
I have one question for now - my original 'fine' was £160.00. By time we got to court, this had risen £38.06 to £198.06. plus £35.00 Court fee and £50.00 legal reps costs, giving a grand total of £283.06.
Am I right in assuming that in my colleagues case, with 4 tickets to consider, the charge will rise from the current £640.00 to £792.24 (4 x £38.06 + £640.00), but the legal fees and the court costs will stay the same (£35.00 and 50.00?)

Johnersh

Depends. If the ppc issued separate claim forms for some or all of those tickets then their costs (claimed) may well be higher. They will also try to claim interest.

That doesn't mean you can't challenge the costs of course. 

Coupon-mad

If your colleague can slowly reply on the last day given on the LBC, saying he/she is seeking debt advice, I hope that the '30 day hold' period will take the case past the date when the DLUHC will be publishing their Draft Impact Assessment.

Anticipated in a month.

They joy of that (I hope) is that I fairly confidently anticipate that the Draft Impact Assessment will surely ride roughshod through the untruths spouted by PPCs that they have somehow incurred multiples of £70 damages for sending a template threatogram or two.   After all, in 2022 the Minister called that 'extorting money from motorists'.

If my hopes are proved correct, I think it will drive a coach and horses through scam PPC Claims and they'll have to admit it doesn't cost anything in addition to the (already increased from £60) parking charge.

Educated guess above.  Time will tell!

Make sure your colleague times it right. SLOWLY STRING IT OUT. 

Any scope for landowner complaint during July?

KennyMc157

Johnersh said:

Depends. If the ppc issued separate claim forms for some or all of those tickets then their costs (claimed) may well be higher. They will also try to claim interest.

That doesn't mean you can't challenge the costs of course. 

So in theory, they could issue 4 court summons? Which would all add a further £85.00 to each bill. I feel a bit more pressure helping someone (or relaying your help if truth be told), than when it was my own case. The possibility of her £640.00 morphing into circa £1k and her losing fills me with horror as, as with most people on the receiving end of these things, she is close to paying up as it is. If she didn't know of my own success in fighting one of these things, she most certainly would have already.

KennyMc157

Coupon-mad said:

If your colleague can slowly reply on the last day given on the LBC, saying he/she is seeking debt advice, I hope that the '30 day hold' period will take the case past the date when the DLUHC will be publishing their Draft Impact Assessment.

Anticipated in a month.

They joy of that (I hope) is that I fairly confidently anticipate that the Draft Impact Assessment will surely ride roughshod through the untruths spouted by PPCs that they have somehow incurred multiples of £70 damages for sending a template threatogram or two.   After all, in 2022 the Minister called that 'extorting money from motorists'.

If my hopes are proved correct, I think it will drive a coach and horses through scam PPC Claims and they'll have to admit it doesn't cost anything in addition to the (already increased from £60) parking charge.

Educated guess above.  Time will tell!

Make sure your colleague times it right. SLOWLY STRING IT OUT. 

Any scope for landowner complaint during July?

I will advise her to do this, if we can find out who the landowner is. I don't think i identified the correct landowner on my own case - I'll try harder this time and advise her to contact them. My colleague actually had a permit to park there, supplied by a friend who worked on the Business Park, but on the occasions of the 'tickets' she'd forgot to display it. It would have been an idea to raise this at the time, but I doubt it holds much value to her case now. I will advise her to hold off on the request to pause the action and will keep a keen eye on developments. Thanks

Coupon-mad

There are no summonses in small claims.

The friend's employer can cancel these charges.

Make sure she knows ONLY to hold off until the last date given on the LBC, not to forget it, and to make sure she says she is SEEKING DEBT ADVICE.

...not 'legal advice' and not other wording.

If she does nothing, a claim will arrive in July.  Not that it's a problem!

But I'd rather drag it past the date of the DLUHC's long-awaited Impact Assessment as it will likely include wording that will assist with exaggerated parking threatograms and LBCs, I expect.

The possibility of her £640.00 morphing into circa £1k and her losing fills me with horror

Eh?  Impossible!

Where did you get that sum of a GRAND from?  There won't be four claims!  Four PCNs is £400 plus ONE small filing fee and ONE £70 legal fee. 

LESS THAN THEY ARE DEMANDING NOW.

she is close to paying up as it is.

STOP HER!

Johnersh

OK, to be clear, sometimes claimants do issue more than one claim form. That is more common when there are more than 4 dates in play.

@Coupon-mad is entirely correct that the claimant should simply issue one claim to deal with them all.

Random fact...  for interest, a recent appeal case - Abbott v MOD - has found over 3500 related cases could indeed be issued on a single claim form.

That being the case, one could sensibly argue that time and costs had been thrown away if there were multiple proceedings issued in a case like this.

You'd have to be quite unlucky to lose on

* all the tickets
* all the enhancements to the tickets
* all the interest.

Even those claims that are unsuccessful (and there are, of course, some) often get trimmed in some respect. 

Coupon-mad

V useful, thanks Johnersh.

My advice was based on the assumption that there is only one LBC (not four LBCs).  In my experience, there will only be one claim when there is one LBC listing multiple PCNs.

It's when people get multiple LBCs from scum 'parking roboclaim' firms and then don't reply pointing out the PCNs need consolidating, that they then get multiple claims.

Not that it matters, really.  Be confident!

All are defendable and almost all are won here, and it is already as rare as hen's teeth to find a Judge who is daft enough to let this rogue industry get away with adding £70 on top of each PCN.

And after the DLUHC's Draft Impact Assessment hopefully exposes this inflating of parking charges as 'extortion' (again) then any parking claims in progress or at pre-action stage like this one, are going to be partly torpedoed.

At the very least, the roboclaim gits are going to have to significantly reassess their position - if I am proved right.

KennyMc157

Good evening good people - further to this one - my friend has today received her SAR from VCS. She specifically requested all details they held on her between the dates 01/01/18 to 30/11/18 (she has 4 tickets, spanning this period they are chasing her for). The response today is a number of pictures, but they are all to do with just one ticket only, The ticket was from July 2017 - ie, it's not even one of the four raised in the LOC. Should she just raise this with them - point out their 'error' and request they send what was requested? Any other (better) course of action she can take? 

KeithP

KennyMc157 said:

Good evening good people - further to this one - my friend has today received her SAR from VCS. She specifically requested all details they held on her between the dates 01/01/18 to 30/11/18 (she has 4 tickets, spanning this period they are chasing her for). The response today is a number of pictures, but they are all to do with just one ticket only, The ticket was from July 2017 - ie, it's not even one of the four raised in the LOC. Should she just raise this with them - point out their 'error' and request they send what was requested? Any other (better) course of action she can take? 

Rather than pointing out their mistake, perhaps you can rely upon that response as confirming that VCS has no evidence of any wrongdoing between 1st January 2018 and 30th November 2018.   

KennyMc157

I was thinking this, but if we go to court and they produce the evidence, that would scupper that claim surely? Or are we able to use their failure to comply fully with the SAR to have the case dismissed?