UKPC parking invoice, all corrospondace igonored and now issued a CCJ. lost and in need of help

croydesurf

Hi forum, 

i was losing a lot of hope until i found this area and saw the amazing advice that was given to people in similar situations to myself and my partner. 

back in December 2022, we went on a date to the gym and a mcdonalds drive through, the car park states that we can be there for 2hrs 30min and we were over by 15mins. We disregarded this though as the gym we attended offers parking all day for free if you put your reg into the ipad, however the pad wasn't present at the time. we left the gym and queued for our food for some time and left. we were caught by an ANPR camera on the entrance and exit of the car park. My partner received a letter from DCBL (direct collections bailiffs ltd) of an unpaid parking charge, of which she contacted them with an appeal with the above information. fast forward and a few other letters and attempts to contact from her and she received letter from DCBL of an unpaid CCJ. She cliams to me that she never received a response pack from the court, of which, she would have defended due to using the facilities that provide day parking and use of a drive through.

i know worst case for us is to pay the money and have the CCJ on record but i fear this will crush our opportunity to become home owners. the situation now boils down to the following Qs; 

1) do we have reasonable grounds to get the CCJ put aside?
2) do we have reasonable grounds if put aside to challenge the invoice sent by UKPC.

any helpful opinions would be valued by us, i think we are both fed up of losing sleep over this situation. 
 FYI the charge is currently at £280 from £60.
thanks in advance, 

Croyde surf.

PS coupon mad please help 

Le_Kirk

You have to ask yourself why the claim form (N1) and/or response pack was not received; was it because the address on the V5C is not up-to-date?  This should be checked now!
From your post I assume the date for paying the judgment without having it on your credit file has past.  What was the date of the judgment?  If you read the NEWBIE sticky and search it for set-aside topics you will find the info you need.  It costs £275 for an application using the N244 form and you will find there are two grounds for having it set aside, one being some fault with the serving of the original N1 claim form, normally that it went to the wrong address through no fault of yours and the second some other reason with the defendant being able to have a reasonable prospect of defending the underlying claim.  Bear in mind that some judges do not like credit cleansing.

croydesurf

hey le kirk, 
thank you very much for replying to the thread, appreciate your time. 
ok i will ask the court for a reason we never received the N1, however we did receive from the court in July 23 the judgement (date 10 july) stating that we had not responded to a claim form. of course impossible to do as it was never received in the post; im not sure that this is a good defence, albeit its true.

i think our strongest reason for n224 is that we have permission from uk pc to park all day with use of the gym, im really surprised they didnt drop all invoices when we told them this. We did complain to the gym but they told us to contact uk pc with surprise was extremely difficult. 
all im think now is perhaps the idea of fighting this is hopeless and perhaps we should pay the money.

Agreed, ill be sure the motive is not to strike the CCJ from the record, but to revoke the original invoice. 

from what ive pick up reading other forums, i need to provide a n224 and a witness statement? and have these sent to the county court that issued the CCJ and notify our accusers, ukpc?

cheers,
croyde surf

croydesurf

hi forum, im currently filling out a N244 and a WS, but cant seem to put into words section 3 that detail what i am asking the court to do and why. 

i cant prove that we didnt receive the N1, (will have to ring tomorrow with the county court to verify it was sent) but i believe the case should be put aside for the reason 
13.3

(1) In any other case, the court may set aside or vary a judgement entered under Part 12 if –

(a) the defendant has a real prospect of successfully defending the claim; or

(b) it appears to the court that there is some other good reason why –

(i) the judgment should be set aside or varied; or

(ii) the defendant should be allowed to defend the claim.

is this a suitable response on the N244 and should be the narrative of the WS? 

any advice would be appreciated, thanks 

Le_Kirk

did you check the NEWBIE sticky and read some of the set-aside examples?  Also you could check threads posted by the following: -

@hallie28

@Harvez63

@parkingpains1

@Jack5656

croydesurf

hi le kirk, 

yes i am currently going through the newbie set aside areas and looking at a case which has good resource material, although the case isn't similar to mine as the N1 was sent to a different address. ill have a look at the other threads and also post my section 3 when i have finished it to see what people think. 

cheers,

B789

You need to carefully read and re-read the Newbies/FAQ thread if you want to get this dealt with. The most important question you need to answer first is did you receive the original N1 Claim Form from the CCBC?

If you say you didn't, is that possibly because the address on the vehicle's V5C logbook was not up to date? If you had moved any time before the parking event, besides updating your driver's licence address with the DVLA, did you also update the V5C logbook address? Many people overlook this and later wonder why they never received notification of parking charges or court claims as they would have gone to whatever address is registered on their V5C. If that is the case, you must update the V5C address which can be done online. You risl a real "fine" of up to £1,000 for not doing so.

If you never received the N1 Court Claim, for whatever reason, you can go for a mandatory set aside under CPR 13.2. If you just ignored a claim and didn't defend it then you can kiss a set aside goodbye. You could request a discretionary set aside under CPR 13.3 in that the original claim had a good chance of being defended but you'd also have to convince the judge that the reason you didn't defend the original claim was valid.

croydesurf

hey B789, thanks for your response appreciate you taking the time. 

i intend to ask the CCBC when they sent the N1, i beleive they may have sent it to the correct address as i have recieved the CCJ from them. your comment;

'If you never received the N1 Court Claim, for whatever reason, you can go for a mandatory set aside under CPR 13.2.' is this applicable even if they sent it to the correct address? 

we have not ignored a claim from the court, and believe we have grounds to challenge the charges, however as there will be a cost incurred for applying for the set aside which is nearly the amount of the parking fee, we are starting to wonder if this will be a good idea for us to pursue. thanks again to you both for your comments, its been very useful to discuss this with you. 

cheers,

B789

croydesurf said:

i intend to ask the CCBC when they sent the N1, i beleive they may have sent it to the correct address as i have recieved the CCJ from them. your comment;

'If you never received the N1 Court Claim, for whatever reason, you can go for a mandatory set aside under CPR 13.2.' is this applicable even if they sent it to the correct address? 

we have not ignored a claim from the court, and believe we have grounds to challenge the charges, however as there will be a cost incurred for applying for the set aside which is nearly the amount of the parking fee, we are starting to wonder if this will be a good idea for us to pursue.

If you're saying that you received the judgment order form from the CCBC (now CNBC) to the correct address, it is likely that the original N1 claim form was also sent to the same address. However, checking with the CNBC should confirm that. If you are absolutely sure you never received theN1 claim form, then you should try and establish why. If it is possible that it just got thrown out with junk mail, then you'll have a very difficult time explaining that to the judge. If it was lost in the post, then that is possible but also difficult to prove.

When was the CCJ issued? Find out what date the N1 Claim form was issued.

If the claim was sent to a wrong address, then you can ask for the set aside fee to be paid by the claimant but a judge may reserve it depending on the outcome of re-issuing the clam and defending it successfully. If you go for a set aside under CPR 13.3, it is almost certain you won't get your N244 fee refunded.

If the CCJ is less than 30 days old, depending on what the judgment order states, you may be able to just pay it and it will be expunged from your credit record. If it's past that date and you pay it, it will just marked as "satisfied" but will still reman om your credit record for 6 years.

croydesurf

@B789 thats really sound advice, I think that will likely drive my decision. if the CCBC say the claim was sent to the correct address, we will most likely pay the CCJ as the cost of setting aside the CCJ is of the same value. there is no guarantee we will win and the stress involved in appealing at court may not be worth the saving. ill find out when the claim was issued too. 

I think the thing i hate the most about all this is that we didnt do anything wrong, ill be sure to write to the MP about my experience regardless of the outcome so that he knows that people are having sleepless nights over unfair parking fines.

Coupon-mad

I think that's the right approach.

The CCBC is shocking at Claim forms going astray but they even denied there was an issue in December 2022 when there was a postal strike.

I sent the MoJ an FOI and they put their fingers in their ears and effectively told me to run along: "nothing to see here":
https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/information_about_moneyclaims_af#incoming-2327373

The MoJ should be ashamed of the way they favour known rogue claimants with exaggerated parking claims, IMHO.