NPM County Court Claim

1505grandad

"7. On the 13/08/2023 the defendant’s friend....  -  if retained in D assume that is date typo

Coupon-mad

Remove 8, 9 & 10.

Too much detail and don't talk about the signs being abundant and clear!

And remove this:

"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."

B789

You are ONLY defending against the PoC. Why are you giving the claimant so much meat to chew on? I will hazard a gurss that the PoC make no mention of the actual infringement and is just a boilerplate, ambiguous claim with just  mention of dates, PCN numbers, location and that's it.

Think about what you are putting in your defence. Don't do the claimant's job of proving everything for them. Your "War & Peace" story will come at WS time, in your own words.

Fever

Thank-you for your feedback everyone!
OK I've had another go at the whole thing hopefully making it much more fact based and less of a narrative

Yes one of the points I was trying to make there obviously didn't come across well - I was parking on the road outside the car park, I was trying to say that even if I had noticed the sign forbidding parking on the road, at a glance I wouldn't have realised it was any different to the many signs about who can and can't park within the car park itself - I was trying to say that spotting the one sign about the road amongst all the signs about the car park would have been like a game of Where's Wally or something - I don't know if that's a good point or not but I feel like maybe I wasn't making it well and clear, this would be paragraph 5 in the revised one below, I can revise it further or delete entirely, please let me know
I didn't mean it to sound like any of the signage was clear though, it was all verbose and confusing

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

3. The defendant was issued PCNs for parking on the road outside the car park for the flats in West Cotton Close, which appeared, for a number of reasons, to be a normal public road with no parking restrictions.

4. 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 

5. The car park contained many notices detailing the terms and conditions of parking within the car park itself while there was only one relevant but very similar looking sign forbidding parking on the road which was displayed, unlit, at chest height such that even if those signs had been noticed it would not have been clear, especially at night, that they were different signs to the car park ones.

6  All signage was unclear, overly verbose and used a confusing array of fonts and lettering styles, much of it very fine in line width. 

7. The claimant has also installed two signs at the entrance to the estate it controls. However these are identical to the ones where the defendant parked, many metres and a roundabout away and are unlit, at chest height, and are at 90 degrees to the road and therefore are inappropriate to be seen by the road users of the site, especially at night

8. At least one area of the site within the entrance signs has 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.

9. 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.

10. In regard to the first PCN of 04/04/2018 The defendant parked his car on the road outside the car park for the flats in West Cotton Close in good faith believing it to be a normal public road, due to the poorly represented, sparse, unlit and confusingly placed signage and the fact that he had parked there on numerous previous occasions with the claimant having only recently begun to enforce parking restrictions on the road with no notice to residents or road users.

11. In regard to the second PCN of 13/08/2018, the defendant parked his card very briefly in West Cotton Close for the purposes of unloading with no reasonably expected grace period given. 

Fever

Sorry, here it is again with those 2 other paragraphs I was advised to remove gone

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

3. The defendant was issued PCNs for parking on the road outside the car park for the flats in West Cotton Close, which appeared, for a number of reasons, to be a normal public road with no parking restrictions.

4. 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 

5. The car park contained many notices detailing the terms and conditions of parking within the car park itself while there was only one relevant but very similar looking sign forbidding parking on the road which was displayed, unlit, at chest height such that even if those signs had been noticed it would not have been clear, especially at night, that they were different signs to the car park ones.

6  All signage was unclear, overly verbose and used a confusing array of fonts and lettering styles, much of it very fine in line width. 

7. 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.

8. In regard to the first PCN of 04/04/2018 The defendant parked his car on the road outside the car park for the flats in West Cotton Close in good faith believing it to be a normal public road, due to the poorly represented, sparse, unlit and confusingly placed signage and the fact that he had parked there on numerous previous occasions with the claimant having only recently begun to enforce parking restrictions on the road with no notice to residents or road users.

9. In regard to the second PCN of 13/08/2018, the defendant parked his card very briefly in West Cotton Close for the purposes of unloading with no reasonably expected grace period given. 

Fever

I got the SAR through today too, which included the signage as it was in 2018 (at the bottom, at night) while on the left is the photo of a sign on the site I took recently, the new sign is more explicit about parking on 'either side of the road' while the old sign didn't say what, exactly was private land and I took it to be referring to the car park only but it's a better sign overall and more similar to the Beavis one! 

Also they reminded me that there was in fact a prior PCN dated 22/11/2017 that they stopped pursuing at some point for some reason - would they be able to pull that out as evidence that I should have been aware of the situation by the second PCN on 04/04/2018?
 

Coupon-mad

"would they be able to pull that out as evidence?"

No, they don't do joined up thinking.

I think those facts are about twice as much as is needed.  See if you and family/friends can cut that down to half the words over the weekend!

Le_Kirk

Providing you mention lack of clear, non-verbose signage ONCE in the defence, you can expand upon it with all the explanation you have put in the defence but in the witness statement.  Be careful though, if you are claiming NO signage and then go on to say it is illegible, verbose or similar.  Maybe you made a return trip (on foot) after receiving the PCN/LBA/Claim Form for research purposes.

B789

All you need is para #2 and then amalgamate paras #8 and #9 as your para #3 should be more than enough to expand on later at WS stage. The rest of the defence template covers everything else you need.

Fever

Thanks again everyone, sorry if I'm being hard work here -  hopefully I'm making progress though

I've posted below what I've got it down to now. Just wanted to check about paragraph 5 - it, of course, refers to PCM v Bull 2016 which I've seen quite a lot on the forums and the paragraph was copy / pasted from another defence thread - just wanted to double check you think it should go, even so? Is that a defence that has since show not to hold up?

I've also changed what I'm saying in Paragraph 3 based more on the photo of the sign supplied in the SAR from the time and not the one I saw on a site visit 5 years (!) later please let me know if you think it's a step backwards or a shakier argument, there's standard stuff about Beavis and poor signage in the rest of the template anyway, right?

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

3. In regard to the first PCN of 04/04/2018 The defendant parked his car on the road in good faith believing it to be a normal public road, seeing no indication to the contrary. The defendant has since seen a photo of the sign supplied by the claimant and believes that it was the ambiguous use of the term ‘private land’ without further explanation that led the defendant to believe that it pertained to the car park and not the road outside.

4. In regard to the second PCN of 13/08/2018, the defendant parked his card very briefly in West Cotton Close for the purposes of unloading with no reasonably expected grace period given. 

5. The wording of the relevant sign is 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.