NPM County Court Claim

Fever

Apologies if I have missed anything already covered but I have read through your excellent advise but still have questions before I formulate my county court defence for an PCN for which I am the defendant

The Date of Issue of the claim form is 17 July 2023
I filed an AoS using the new online system over five days after this date, so i worked out that I have until the 19th to get my defence submitted now?

The claimant is National Parking Management and they are being represented by Gladstones

They are claiming for 2 parking charges against me on 04/04/2018 and 13/08/2018

This was on a seemingly public residential road outside a block of flats where a friend of ours lived, the only signage around was within the grounds of the car park and seemed to be relating to parking within the car park not on the road outside and at the time of the first charge I had no idea that a charge would be applicable having parked in the same place to visit our friend many, many times previously

Obviously I did incur a second charge at a later date but our friend was moving out at that point and I was dropping some cardboard boxes in for her mistakenly thinking I would have a 5 minute grace period or so to do this

Firstly I have read up about charges and how they should not be charging more than £100 for PCN although they may try to charge an extra £60 or so, well this is what they are actually claiming in this instance:

£100 per PCN
£70 per PCN contractual cost pursuant to the contact and PCN t's and c's

So far as expected but then:

Together with statutory interest of £174.63 pursuant to s69 of the County Courts Act 1984 at 10.25% per annum continuing at £0.10 per day

Which they are totally at £514.63

THEN adding court fees of £70
Legal representative's costs £70

for a total amount of £654.63

Which seems extra excessive, unless I'm missing something?

I won't post it here but I found an article from the local paper online about a resident of the same flats in the same street who, between Oct 2017 and Feb 2018 had been charged a total of £1100  so far for parking his second car on the road while friends and family had been charged a total of £400 so far as there is only one visitor space for 25 flats

NPC said 
"A spokesperson for National Parking Management said the area in question has suffered from over-parking for some time.

"Due to the way in which vehicles have been parking in this area, they have been blocking the roadways for the emergency services.

"The landowners have been contacted by the emergency services and requested to keep the area clear so that they have easy access if ever needed.

"Also, the vehicles in this area park half on the road and half on the pavement, again blocking access to pedestrians who may have a pushchair and/or using a wheelchair, in some cases they would have to go into the road to go around the parked cars.

"Obviously, anyone who has received a parking charge notice would not be happy, but the information/signage is available for individuals to view before they themselves decide to park their vehicle in any location.

"By parking their vehicle on the private land we maintain they agree to abide by all the terms and conditions specified on our signage. Breach of any term or condition will result in the driver being liable for a parking charge of £100."

So would any of that be worth using as corroborative evidence or would it be considered irrelevant or even count against me?

Confused as to how they can claim that it is 'private land' but the landlord is still subject to laws governing access for emergency vehicles but then I'm not a lawyer

It does seem that the parking charges suddenly started being applied without warning when they had not been applied previously around the time I received my PCNs though

I, sadly,. did not take photos at the time but did visit the site on foot and took some photos some 5 1/2 years later, NPC not choosing to pursue the claim in the courts until the 6 year deadline was close

I found that where the area that NPC control the parking of begins there are two signs either side of the road at 90 degrees to it that are verbase and use many font sizes and styles etc  that I would have driven past at 30mph as I went to park 400 meters away on the other side of a roundabout

Maybe unfortunately for me but tellingly the precice car park in question is no longer controlled by NPC with another company's signs up and the road outside it is no longer controlled at all by the look of it with many cars parked along the pavement

Also is it relevant that one section of road within the controlled area, on the entrance side of the roundabout is marked with a standard council single yellow line? I'm thinking that seeing this adds to the confusion as it does more to give the impression that it's a normal, council controlled area with yellow line restriction markings in some areas and no such markings where I was parked

Sorry this was a long post and sorry I have left it a bit late to come to you

Thank-you in advance 

Coupon-mad

Welcome!

Search the forum for

Gladstone's 10.25% interest

...and change the search to NEWEST.

Read the defence written last week that mentioned that unconscionable exaggeration.  Easy enough to defend using the Template defence but do add the extra pojnt (already written just days ago) about that interest. 

Please show a pic of the Claim form, but redact your name, address, the 2 PCN numbers (if stated) and your VRM on the left and the claim number and the MCOL password in the right.

YankeeBrit

By my estimate, you have until 4 pm on Monday the 21st of August to file your defence. @KeithP will verify.

KeithP

Fever said:

The Date of Issue of the claim form is 17 July 2023
I filed an AoS using the new online system over five days after this date, so i worked out that I have until the 19th to get my defence submitted now?

With a Claim Issue Date of 17th July, and having filed an Acknowledgment of Service in a timely manner, then as @YankeeBrit says, you have until 4pm on Monday 21st August 2023 to file your Defence.

That's well over a week 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 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'.

Fever

Thank-you everyone who has posted so far for all of your help
Is this all OK @Coupon-mad? You meant me to post this here yeah?
Thanks

Coupon-mad

Fever said:

Thank-you everyone who has posted so far for all of your help
Is this all OK @Coupon-mad? You meant me to post this here yeah?
Thanks

Yes thankyou.  It helps us to help you if we see the POC on the left there.

However you know already from previous posts, exactly what to put in your defence - right down to copying wording about the 10.25% interest - so you just need to show us your draft, please.

Due to the unconscionable 10.25% interest* and adding 2 x false DRA fees (they've called 'contractual costs' of £70 each PCN) that is quite possibly the most extortionately enhanced claims for just 2 PCNs that I've ever seen!

Great evidence for the Government, thankyou I can use that one in my submission to the DLUHC about excessive 'fees'.

They've bumped just TWO PCNs so massively high that it's over the £600 ceiling - wow - which increases the legal fees to £70 and means if they'd got a CCJ (if you don't defend) they could have sent HCEOs to your door and clamped your car! This is appalling.

* LOOK - it should be no more than 8%:

https://www.gov.uk/make-court-claim-for-money/work-out-interest


ONCE YOU HAVE DEFENDED

Make a complaint to the SRA that:

 Gladstones are adding 10.25% interest to every parking claim even though the CPRs cap it in small claims at no more than 8%.  They are believed to be a 'top 5 bulk litigator' as exposed by the DLUHC in their draft Impact Assessment published on 30th July 2023, which means they issue tens of thousands of parking claims per annum.

The DLUHC also exposed in the draft IA analysis, that the true cost of pre-action stage is no more than £9 per case (not per PCN).  But in this claim, Gladstones has added 2 x £70 which they've called 'contractual costs' but that really means pre-action enhancement which is believed to be kept as a disproportionate 'reward fee' by the bulk litigators in parking cases. Not the clients. But Gladstones have already added as well to this claim. the supposedly 'capped' £70 legal fees.

So this looks like 'double recovery' of massively exaggerated costs by the bulk litigator and (it is believed) improper interest on top.  The result is that a claim for "2 x £100 PCNs" has morphed to a sum so disproportionately high that it looks like Gladstones would trouser (unconscionably for a small claim) by more than twice the sum returned to their client, if they win, or had it gone to a default CCJ.

Further, the claim that should be £200 plus capped court fees (£85) now conveniently exceeds the HCEO £600 ceiling. Gladstones John Davies has set up a bailiff arm. So, a £200 claim suddenly becomes far more lucrative for the solicitor than the client, it seems.

That cannot be right in a small claim, especially with an improper interest rate applied as the icing on the cake.  These additions are suspected to be kept by or shared with the solicitor and if this is.true, they are not true 'contractual costs' for the client at all.  Depending on who keeps what and whatever HMRC sees as the true purpose of the money added, this may also have VAT implications.   And this is happening to tens of thousands of consumers every year.

Given the MoJ's latest quarterly statistics show that 91% of small claims are sadly undefended and thus cause the vast majority to go to default CCJs, adding what the RAC has called out as plainly 'false' costs/fees (that it is believed are are kept by the bulk litigator on top of the '£70 legal fees' which the small claims system intends to be capped) plus improper interest, means that this looks like (allegedly) serial exaggeration of claims by Gladstones.

If the SRA investigates and agrees with the above, this must surely be in breach of the SRA Standards.  This alleged conduct cannot be acceptable in small claims.

Fever

Yes, thank-you it did seem particularly excessive! 
Glad that at least it will help you fight them generally going forward then
Yes I have the standard defence template and have added the parts about the 10.25% interest, I've just got to run through the rest of it now - thanks again

Coupon-mad

For me to say that's the highest 2xPCN claim I've ever seen is saying something because I've done this stuff for 15 years!

Please do simply copy & paste everything that I wrote in the second half of my reply, into an online complaint to the SRA about Gladstones, attaching a copy of the claim form and a URL link to the DLUHC's draft Impact Assessment.

It is high time this was investigated by the SRA.

Just thinking as well, that it is high time HMRC had a look at who keeps what.

HMRC looks in depth and decides the true meaning of funds -  e.g. just because Gladstones call it a 'contractual cost' for the client, doesn't mean HMRC would agree, if it turns out - after scrutiny by tax experts - to really be what people suspect is (in whole or in part) more likely to be a 'reward fee' for the bulk litigator.

Send the same thing to HMRC!

Fever

Hi, sorry, I've been away for a few days but now I'm back and have gotten my first draft of a defence together, if you could check it over for me?
I added the part about the 10.25% interest at paragraph 14
Thank-you, you are all so kind and helpful

1.  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 in breach of any term.  Further, it is denied that this Claimant (understood to have a bare licence as agents) 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 boilerplate text in the Particulars of Claim ('the POC').

The facts known to the Defendant:

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

3. On 04/04/2018 The defendant was visiting friends who, at the time, were resident in Flat 64 West Cotton Close. The car park for the flats is clearly controlled with numbered bays for each flat and one visitor space which is almost always occupied and was, indeed, on this occasion and for which, the defendant was informed by the resident, a permit is also required.

4. The defendant therefore parked his car on the road in front of the car park for the flats as he had done on numerous previous occasions and which both the defendant and resident, in good faith, fully believed to be a normal, public road with no yellow lines or marked bays indicating that any parking restrictions might apply at any time.

5. The defendant was therefore shocked and dismayed to receive a PCN in the post a few days later and fully believed it to be in error with any reference to the defendant being within the ‘private parking area’ being a reference to the fact that the claimant believed the defendant to have parked his vehicle within the car park rather than on the road.

6. The defendant appealed the PCN using the claimant’s own online form on 26/04/2018 but the claimant denied the appeal and started issuing letters threatening court action 

7. On the 13/08/2023 the defendant’s friend, the resident, was in the process of moving out of flat 64 as as the defendant had recently moved house himself he had a number of cardboard boxes that she could make good use of. Mindful of the previous PCN received but with nowhere else nearby to reasonably park, especially when carrying large and unwieldy items, the defendant ensured that he parked for as brief a time as possible and was there for only around 10 minutes but was again shocked to find that he had been given no kind of grace period and received a second PCN a couple of days later. 

8. The car park contained many notices detailing the terms and conditions of parking within the car park itself while the relevant signage forbidding parking on the road was much more infrequent and was displayed, unlit, at chest height on the side of small brick buildings to house waste bins that happened to abut the pavement. All signage was unclear, overly verbose and used a confusing array of fonts and lettering styles, much of it very fine in line width. Therefore not only was it difficult to spot any signage about parking on the road, even if the signage had been seen it was not at all clear that it was saying anything different to the abundant signage about the car park itself

9. On inspecting the wider site, it was found that there are two further, identical parking forbiddance signs are at the entrance to the estate that the claimant controls the parking within but again are at chest height, unlit, and are at 90 degrees to the road and therefore the defendant would have had no chance to see them when driving past at 30mph

10. Furthermore, it was found that at least one area of the site within the entrance signs still had a council style single yellow line next to the curb causing further confusion as to what restrictions are in place and who is enforcing them.

11. The wording of the relevant signs are also of a “forbidding” nature. The terms are limited to cars displaying valid permits only and therefore the terms cannot apply to cars without a permit because the signage does not offer an invitation to park on certain terms. The terms are forbidding.

12. The facts in this defence come from the Defendant's own knowledge and honest belief.  Conversely. the Defendant observes after researching other parking claims with the same POC that this claim sets out a cut-and-paste incoherent statement of case.  The POC is sparse on facts and specific breach allegation, making it very difficult to respond. The Defendant avers that this claim is unfair and inflated and it is denied that any sum is due, whether in debt or damages.

13.  The alleged 'core debt' from any parking charge cannot have exceeded £100 (the industry cap).  It is denied that any 'Debt Fees' or damages were actually paid or incurred by this Claimant, who is put to strict proof of:

(i).  the alleged breach, which is not pleaded in the POC and thus requires further and better particulars, and

(ii). a breakdown of how they arrived at the enhanced sum in the POC, including how interest has been calculated, which looks to have been applied improperly on the entire inflated sum, as if that figure was overdue on the day of the alleged parking event.  

14. Whatever the allegation turns out to be, it must be common ground that the terms have been complied with or substantially complied with, and the Claimant will concede that no financial loss has arisen.  The charge imposed, in all the circumstances is a penalty (not saved by the ParkingEye v Beavis case, which is fully distinguished).  In addition to the fact that the sum claimed under purported 'contract' is disproportionately exaggerated, additionally the interest is inflated in two ways:

(i).  Interest appears to be miscalculated on the whole enhanced sum from day one as if £160 or £170 was 'overdue' on the day of parking;

(ii). Gladstones have applied the wrong interest rate of 10.25% which they appear to have made up.  The highest rate allowed in civil claims (only at the discretion of courts) is 8%. I have discovered from research that this legal representative roboclaim firm (connected to the IPC trade body) always adds 10.25% interest and are highly likely to be one of the top five 'bulk parking case litigators' shown in the Government's analysis, linked elsewhere in this statement.  Gladstones indisputably issue tens of thousands of inflated parking claims every year, all of which have the wrong interest rate (a deplorable 10.25%)  and the unconscionably enhanced £60 or £70 (per PCN) which can add hundreds to some claims.  Given that the MoJ's quarterly statistics show that 90% of small claims go to default CCJs, this is clearly an abuse, and it appears to be for the profit of Gladstones and nothing to do with the Claimant's alleged £100 PCN.  I hope the Judge addresses this in the final judgment, at the very least to warn or sanction Gladstones as the court sees fit.

Fever

15.  This Claimant routinely pursues a disproportionate fixed sum (inexplicably added per PCN) despite knowing that the will of Parliament is to ban or substantially reduce disproportionate 'Debt Fees'.  This case is a classic example where adding exaggerated fees encourages the 'numbers game' of inappropriate, out of control bulk litigation of weak/archive parking cases.  MoJ statistics of bulk litigators reveal that there are hundreds of thousands of parking claims every year with some 90% causing default CCJs adding up to hundreds of millions of pounds.  No checks and balances are likely to have been made to ensure facts, merit or a proper cause of action, given away by the woefully inadequate POC.

16.  The Department for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities ('the DLUHC') first published a statutory Parking Code of Practice in February 2022, here: https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/private-parking-code-of-practice.       in which the Ministerial Foreword was damning: "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." 

17.  Despite legal challenges delaying the Code's implementation (marking it as temporarily 'withdrawn') a draft Impact Assessment (IA) to finalise it was published on 30th July 2023. The Government's analysis has exposed what they state are industry-gleaned facts about supposed 'Debt Fees'. The analysis is found here: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1171438/Draft_IA_-_Private_Parking_Code_of_Practice_.pdf

18.  Paragraphs 4.31 and 5.19 suggest that the parking industry has informed the DLUHC that the true minor cost of what the parking industry calls debt recovery or 'enforcement' ( = pre-action) stage totals a mere £8.42 per recovery case (not per PCN).

19.  With that sum in mind, it is clear that the extant claim has been enhanced by an extreme amount, disingenuously added as a 'fee'.  This is believed to be routinely retained by the litigating legal team and in this Claim it is additional to the intended 'legal representatives fees' cap set within the small claims track rules.  This conduct has been examined and found - including in a detailed judgment by Her Honour Judge Jackson, now a specialist Civil High Court Judge on the Leeds/Bradford circuit - to constitute 'double recovery' and the Defendant takes that position.

20.  The new draft IA now demonstrates that the unnecessarily intimidating letter-chains actually cost 'eight times less' (says the DLUHC analysis) than what may be viewed as a 'price-fixed' £70 per PCN. This causes consumer harm in the form of hundreds of thousands of inflated CCJs each year that District Judges have been powerless to prevent.  This abusively enhanced 'industry standard' Debt Fee was enabled by the self-serving Codes of Practice of the rival parking Trade Bodies which were suddenly aligned in 2021 on adding £70, influenced by a Board of parking operators and debt firms who stood to gain from it. 

21.  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 ('the Beavis case').  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 (decision later ratified by the CoA) held in paras 419-428 that unspecified 'admin costs' inflating a parking charge to £135 was not a true reflection of the cost of a template letter and 'would appear to be penal'.

22. This Claimant has not incurred any additional costs because the parking charge more than covers what the Supreme Court in the Beavis case called an 'automated letter-chain' business model that generates a healthy profit.  In Beavis, there were 4 or 5 letters in total, including pre-action reminders.  The £85 'PCN' was held to cover the costs of the operation.  The DLUHC's IA suggests it appears to be the case that the parking charge itself more than covers the very minor costs of pre-action letters, even if and when the Government reduces the PCN level.

23.  In addition, pursuant to Schedule 4 paragraph 4(5) of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 ('the POFA') the sum claimed exceeds the maximum potentially recoverable from a registered keeper.  If seeking keeper/hirer liability - unclear from the POC - the Claimant is put to strict proof of POFA compliance. 

24.  The Defendant avers that the Government's analysis now overrides mistakes made in 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).

25.  Far from being persuasive, regrettably these one-sided appeals saw Circuit Judges led by Counsel for parking firms against litigant-in-person consumers who lacked the wherewithal to appeal. The Defendant avers that errors and plainly wrong presumptions were made in each case.  Evidence was either overlooked (including major evidence discrepancies in Wilshaw, where the Judge was also oblivious to 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 parking contract in Beavis.

26.  Those learned Judges were not in possession of the same level of information as the DLUHC, whose incoming statutory Code now clarifies such matters as a definition of 'parking' as well as 'consideration and grace periods' and minor human oversights such as 'keying errors' or 'fluttering tickets/permits' where the Government says a PCN should not have been issued at all.

27.  Whilst the DLUHC Code is not retrospective, the majority of the clauses went unchallenged by the parking industry and the 2022 iteration stands to become a creature of statute to replace the self-serving BPA & IPC Codes of Practice.  More than once in the draft IA, the Secretary of State mentions they are addressing 'market failure' a phrase which should be a clear steer for Courts in 2023 to scrutinise every aspect of claims like this one.

28.  For the avoidance of doubt, the Defendant avers that there was no agreement to pay a parking charge, let alone added fees which the Defendant believes were not quantified in bold, prominent text (if at all). This Claimant failed to ensure the presence of well-placed, plentiful and readable signs on a par with the large yellow & black warning signs seen in the Beavis case, and unlike the signage requirements set out in the DLUHC Code which reflects the requirements of the Consumer Rights Act 2015 (the 'CRA').

CRA breaches

29.  Claiming costs on an indemnity basis is unfair, per the Unfair Contract Terms Guidance (CMA37, para 5.14.3), the Government guidance on the CRA which introduced new requirements for 'prominence' of both contract terms and 'consumer notices'.  In a parking context, this includes a test of fairness and clarity of signage and all notices, letters and communications intended to be read by consumers.

30.  Section 71 creates a statutory duty upon Courts to consider the test of fairness, including (but not limited to) whether all terms/notices were unambiguously and conspicuously brought to the attention of a consumer.  Signage must be prominent, plentiful, well-placed (and lit in hours of darkness/dusk) and all terms must be unambiguous and contractual obligations clear. 

31.  The Defendant avers that the CRA has been breached due to unfair/unclear terms and notices, pursuant to s62 and paying regard to examples 6, 10, 14 & 18 of Schedule 2 and the duties of fair/open dealing and good faith (NB: this does not necessarily mean there has to be a finding of bad faith).  

ParkingEye v Beavis is distinguished

32.  Unlike in Beavis, the penalty rule remains engaged in this claim due to the unconscionable added 'Fee'.  The CRA covers disproportionate sums, which are not exempt from being assessed for fairness because a late-added Fee is not the core parking price term and neither was it prominently proclaimed on the signs.  

33.  Paraphrasing from the Supreme Court, deterrence is likely to be penal if there is a lack of a 'legitimate interest' in performance extending beyond the prospect of compensation flowing directly from the alleged breach.  The intention cannot be to punish a driver, nor to present them with hidden terms, unexpected/cumbersome obligations nor 'concealed pitfalls or traps'.  In the present case, the Claimant has fallen foul of those tests. Their small signs have vague/hidden terms and minuscule text, incapable of binding a driver.  Court of Appeal authorities about a lack of ‘adequate notice’ of a parking charge include:

(i) Spurling v Bradshaw [1956] 1 WLR 461 (Lord Denning's ‘red hand rule’) and

(ii) Thornton v Shoe Lane Parking Ltd [1970] EWCA Civ2,

both leading authorities that a clause cannot be incorporated after a contract has been concluded; and

(iii) Vine v London Borough of Waltham Forest: CA 5 Apr 2000, where Ms Vine won because it was held that she had not seen the terms by which she would later be bound, due to "the absence of any notice on the wall opposite the parking space''. 

34.  Fairness and clarity of terms and notices are paramount in the DLUHC Code and these clauses stand unchallenged and are supported by the BPA & IPC.  In November 2020's Parking Review, solicitor Will Hurley, CEO of the IPC, observed: "Any regulation or instruction either has clarity or it doesn’t. If it’s clear to one person but not another, there is no clarity. The same is true for fairness. Something that is fair, by definition, has to be all-inclusive of all parties involved – it’s either fair or it isn’t. The introduction of a new ‘Code of Practice for Parking’ provides a wonderful opportunity to provide clarity and fairness for motorists and landowners alike." 

Lack of standing or landowner authority, and lack of ADR

35.  DVLA data is only supplied to pursue parking charges if there is an agreement flowing from the landholder (ref: KADOE rules).  It is not accepted that this Claimant (an agent of a principal) has authority to form contracts at this site in their name.  The Claimant is put to strict proof of their standing to litigate in their own name.

36.  The Claimant failed to offer a genuinely independent Alternative Dispute Resolution (ADR). The Appeals Annex in the DLUHC Code shows that genuine disputes such as this should see PCNs cancelled, had a fair ADR existed.  The rival Trade Bodies' time-limited and opaque 'appeals' services fail to properly consider facts or rules of law and reject most disputes: e.g. the IAS upheld appeals in a woeful 4% of decided cases (2020 Annual Report).  The Claimant's consumer blame culture and reliance upon their own 'appeals service' (described by MPs as a kangaroo court and about to be replaced by the DLUHC, who have in the IA criticised the lack of transparency or independence) should lead Judges to realise that a truly fair appeal was never on offer.

Conclusion

37. The claim is entirely without merit and the POC embarrassing.  The Defendant believes that it is in the public interest that claims like this should be struck out because knowingly enhanced parking claims like this one cause consumer harm on a grand scale.

38.  There is now evidence to support the view - long held by many District Judges - that these are knowingly exaggerated claims.  The July 2023 DLUHC IA analysis surely makes that clear because it is now a matter of record that the industry has told the Government that 'debt recovery' costs eight times less than the sum claimed in almost every case.  

39. In the matter of costs, the Defendant seeks:

(a) standard witness costs for attendance at Court, pursuant to CPR 27.14, and

(b) a finding of unreasonable conduct by this Claimant, and further costs pursuant to CPR 46.5. 

40.  Attention is drawn specifically to the (often-seen) distinct possibility of an unreasonably late Notice of Discontinuance. Whilst CPR r.38.6 states that the Claimant is liable for the Defendant's costs after discontinuance (r.38.6(1)) this does not 'normally' apply to claims allocated to the small claims track (r.38.6(3)). However, the White Book states (annotation 38.6.1): "Note that the normal rule as to costs does not apply if a claimant in a case allocated to the small claims track serves a notice of discontinuance although it might be contended that costs should be awarded if a party has behaved unreasonably (r.27.14(2)(dg))."   

Statement of Truth

I believe that the facts stated in this defence are true.  I understand that proceedings for contempt of court may be brought against anyone who makes, or causes to be made, a false statement in a document verified by a statement of truth without an honest belief in its truth.

Le_Kirk

Is that a defence or a witness statement?  A defence is a series of short, punchy technical/legal arguments whereas the WS is a narrative, the story of the event and what happened subsequently.