VCS - Court Claim - Leeds Bradford Airport

LDast

You won't be able to ask for an alternative date unless you apply to the court and pay the £119 fee. How long ago did you send your N180 DQ? If it was less than 6 months ago, why didn't you put the date of your holiday in as being unavailable?

By not being able to attend the hearing in person, you are at a great disadvantage as the hearing and judgment will be made on the papers. VCS will send a local hire-by-the-hour legal rep to represent them. If you lose, the legal cost are fixed at £50 so you can ignore that silly threat from VCS.

However, if you simply did not turn up for the hearing and lost, you could be liable for the full costs as that would be considered unreasonable behaviour. If you cannot attend the hearing, you must write to the court and inform them that you will be unable to attend and request that the hearing take place in your absence. You could ask that the hearing take place by phone or video link, in which case you would be in attendance from wherever you are on the date.

bn06ash

LDast said:

You won't be able to ask for an alternative date unless you apply to the court and pay the £119 fee. How long ago did you send your N180 DQ? If it was less than 6 months ago, why didn't you put the date of your holiday in as being unavailable?

By not being able to attend the hearing in person, you are at a great disadvantage as the hearing and judgment will be made on the papers. VCS will send a local hire-by-the-hour legal rep to represent them. If you lose, the legal cost are fixed at £50 so you can ignore that silly threat from VCS.

However, if you simply did not turn up for the hearing and lost, you could be liable for the full costs as that would be considered unreasonable behaviour. If you cannot attend the hearing, you must write to the court and inform them that you will be unable to attend and request that the hearing take place in your absence. You could ask that the hearing take place by phone or video link, in which case you would be in attendance from wherever you are on the date.

Thanks for this, the N180 DQ was sent around August last year, so way more than 6 months ago!

LDast

bn06ash said:

Thanks for this, the N180 DQ was sent around August last year, so way more than 6 months ago!

I'm unsure as to how you could plead this to the court. It is unfair that it has taken so long for the court to fix a date for a hiring after the N180 DQ was submitted. More than six months is an unreasonably long time for anyone to try and forecast availability dates for a hearing.

Hopefully one of the trained legals or someone with more experience can advise on how to deal with this dilemma that is not of the defendants making.

Coupon-mad

You should have emailed the court when you booked the holiday.  You knew you had only stated your unavailability for 2023.  This was bound to happen.  I would have thought of it immediately and emailed the court within seconds of booking the holiday, if it were me. 

I am so sorry but unless VCS will consent to the date being moved this will cost you £119 to apply for a new date. Start by emailing VCS to ask if they will consent to the hearing date being moved.

bn06ash

Update on this one - the case WAS adjourned from June with no fees to pay.

As some may have seen on another thread, I missed the deadline to make my evidence bundle so this wasn't presented to the judge. He accepted my candid apologies and I made verbal defences in the hearing.

Thankfully, VCS evidence was a bit of a mess and the case was dismissed - I'm not sure how much detail I'm allowed to put in here? Happy to provide details on why the case was dismissed if allowed?

Coupon-mad

bn06ash said:

Update on this one - the case WAS adjourned from June with no fees to pay.

As some may have seen on another thread, I missed the deadline to make my evidence bundle so this wasn't presented to the judge. He accepted my candid apologies and I made verbal defences in the hearing.

Thankfully, VCS evidence was a bit of a mess and the case was dismissed - I'm not sure how much detail I'm allowed to put in here? Happy to provide details on why the case was dismissed if allowed?

Yay - very well done!

ANOTHER VCS ONE BITES THE DUST!

Could you give us a personal court report like the other winners @InconspicuousSheep21 and @UnloadTheShelves just did this afternoon? 

We learn from every case. Which court and Judge? Did a rep turn up? What point won it?  How did it go from the point you arrived?  Did you ask for costs?

bn06ash

This was Leeds court. 

VCS had sent a third party representative for the case.

As posted, I told the Judge I had submitted a witness statement but it was passed the deadline, I apologised and stated I had no excuse and that it was an error on my part. He said my initial defence raised a lot of points that we could go through - he did make a quip (and seemed sceptical) by saying my defence looked like a copy and paste from a forum...

He immediately challenged VCS on them having the right to operate this piece of land (reminder Leeds Bradford Airport), he also asked if I had any other defences I needed to make, I tried to reference Jopson but the judge was pretty dismissive of this.

Anyway, the judge had the VCS evidence bundle on screen, by pretty much a stroke of luck, I noticed on the map supplied by VCS where I had 'stopped' didn't have the road marked (in the contract between VCS and LBA) as under the control of VCS. I hadn't noticed this previously, and was lucky to spot this in the session.

With a mixture of VCS video footage (and google maps) we all came to an agreement where I had 'stopped' (they couldn't argue this due to the video footage!) - I pursued this further by stating whilst I was aware where the alleged contravention had taken place, this had not been made explicit in the PCN so up until now had made it difficult for me to build a defence. Where I had 'stopped' was a spur road - this was not marked in their contract, however, a further two spur roads had been which helped my argument. As the VCS rep couldn't provide any evidence that this area of land was under their control, a breach couldn't have taken place! They tried to claim that the double red lines and the presence of CCTV proved they had control of the land - I thought this seemed a pretty ridiculous argument and the judge seemingly agreed stating whilst stating that it may seem visually to be under their control, there was no contract to support this. We didn't really cover anything else as there didn't seem much more to cover.

We had a break whilst the judge wrote up his findings, their rep said he was pretty sure I had won. We returned to the room where the Judge dismissed the case, they immediately tried to raise an appeal, but this was immediately dismissed as the points they were trying to raise as grounds for appeal had already been covered by the Judge.

Given my error on submitting my witness statement, I didn't ask for costs, I was just pretty pleased to get out unscathed!

Thanks all for your advice.

Coupon-mad

Woohoo well spotted. Lucky!

Could you help us to identify this spur road exactly? Maybe by showing us VCS' own map then draw where this road is?  I bet we will get other people with the same court claims and knowing where this is will help.

Any landmark buildings or gates there that show in the background in their photo evidence?

bn06ash

Coupon-mad said:

Woohoo well spotted. Lucky!

Could you help us to identify this spur road exactly? Maybe by showing us VCS' own map then draw where this road is?  I bet we will get other people with the same court claims and knowing where this is will help.

Any landmark buildings or gates there that show in the background in their photo evidence?

They have 6 'areas under control', I've highlighted one of these on the google maps image below.

In red is roughly the areas they 'control', including two spur roads (marked with an *). The yellow star is where the alleged offence took place, which wasn't highlighted in their contract with LBA. I think key thing is if anyone receives a ticket from VCS, to clarify whether they actually control the land! This seemed to just be shoddy work on their part when drafting the agreement with LBA.

daveyjp

The yellow star is the spur into a car parking area and barrier controlled.  Where the other red spurs end are also where the barrier controls starts for short stay car park and the terminal drop off areas.