Debt Recovery Plus / CST Law - Letter Before Claim - Next Steps?

polar_opposite

Hi all,

I received a Parking Charge Notice from Smart Parking Ltd and decided to go the militant route of ignoring all correspondence (whilst making sure I kept the abundant number of letters as evidence). 

The PCN was passed on to Debt Recovery Plus Ltd and after I continued to ignore them, they passed it on to CST Law (which is a trading name of Credit Style Ltd).

Just before New Year, CST Law sent me a Letter Before Claim which prompted me to trawl these forums for advice from people who have been in a similar situation. I’ve used the NEWBIES thread as a guiding light so far.

As I’d received the Letter Before Claim, I contacted CST Law (via their online contact form) with the following:

Dear Sir or Madam

Your Ref. #######

Proposed Legal Proceedings

Claimant: Smart Parking Ltd

I confirm that my address for service for the time being - assuming you don't mess about and delay any claim - is as follows, and any older address must be erased from your records:

[address]

I write with reference to a “Letter before Claim” or “LBC” reference (#######) dated 27th of December 2023, but not received until the 5th of January 2023, informing me of a 30-day window in which to take action.

Reducing the available time this way already tells me the kind of unscrupulous people I'm dealing with and suggests that you should date your letters closer to their actual posting date, lest it be seen as trying to manipulate a system and additionally cause unwarranted stress, fear and anxiety over alleged debts.

I fully and robustly deny any debt alleged regarding the above references, and as the registered keeper I deny any liability or entering into any contractual agreement, as stated by your customer Smart Parking Ltd. I will be as well making a complaint to Smart Parking Ltd client's landowner about their predatory conduct. 

I also intend to challenge the legitimacy and fairness of the inflated “Parking Charge” of £170 which has been wholly proven in the courts to be an abuse of process and an unfair and unjust addition without any grounds nor reasoning to its purpose.

I note that you are relying on pursuance of the alleged debt to the “Registered Keeper” of the vehicle. I wish to remind you of Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (section 9, subsection 4) which states:

“(4)The notice must be given by—

(a)handing it to the keeper, or leaving it at a current address for service for the keeper, within the relevant period; or

(b)sending it by post to a current address for service for the keeper so that it is delivered to that address within the relevant period.”

and Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (section 9, subsection 5) which states:

“The relevant period for the purposes of sub-paragraph (4) is the period of 14 days beginning with the day after that on which the specified period of parking ended.”

I draw your attention to the original “Parking Charge Notice” (#######). In this letter are the particulars “Date of Contravention” as the 15/01/2023 and “Date Issued” as the 01/02/2023.

As per the above, the letter has been printed on the 18th day following the alleged contravention and as such, is not compliant with the “relevant period”. I received the letter on the 24th day from the date of the contravention. The letter was posted to my address so could not have arrived sooner than the 14-day cut-off.

The PCN has clearly failed to comply with the strict requirements of Schedule 4 of POFA related to the relevant period and it's vague in its wording - which also fails to comply with requirements of Schedule 4 Section 9 of POFA - and consequently, Smart Parking Ltd has forfeited any right to claim unpaid parking charges from the registered keeper of the vehicle [reg plate no].

I wish to refer you to recent court cases in which Excel Parking Services Limited and Vehicle Control Services Limited, a sister company to Excel, LOST based on this very above stated fact.

(i). In the case of Excel Parking Services Ltd v Anthony Smith at Manchester Court, on appeal re claim number C0DP9C4E in June 2017, His Honour Judge Smith overturned an error by a District Judge and pointed out that, where the registered keeper was not shown to have been driving (or was not driving) such a Defendant cannot be held liable outwith the POFA.  Nor is there any merit in a twisted interpretation of the law of agency (if that was a remedy then the POFA Schedule 4 legislation would not have been needed at all).  HHJ Smith admonished Excel for attempting to rely on a bare assumption that the Defendant was driving or that the driver was acting 'on behalf of' the keeper, which was without merit. Excel could have used the POFA but did not. Mr Smith's appeal was allowed, and Excel's claim was dismissed.

(ii). In April 2023, His Honour Judge Mark Gargan sitting at Teesside Combined Court (on appeal re-claim H0KF6C9C) held in Vehicle Control Services Ltd v Ian Edward that a registered keeper cannot be assumed to have been driving. Nor could any adverse inference be drawn if a keeper is unable or unwilling (or indeed too late, post litigation) to nominate the driver, because the POFA does not invoke any such obligation.  HHJ Gargan concluded at 35.2 and 35.3. "My decision preserves and respects the important general freedom from being required to give information, absent a legal duty upon you to do so; and it is consistent with the appropriate probability analysis whereby simply because somebody is a registered keeper, it does not mean on the balance of probability they were driving on this occasion..." Mr Edward's appeal succeeded, and the Claim was dismissed.

I am not obliged to identify the driver and I decline to do so. The PCN is not effective to transfer liability to myself (the keeper) because it does not comply with the conditions for a notice to keeper in Schedule 4 of the POFA.

I require you/your clients to cancel the PCN and erase my data within 14 days of this email. 

If you persist in processing and/or sharing my data and in the event of Smart Parking Ltd filing a court claim, take note that I will file a Part 20 counterclaim for not less than £500. This will be claimed as damages for distress arising as a result of clear breaches of the Data Protection Act 2018 and/or the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.

I will rely upon the case of Simon Clay v Civil Enforcement Ltd and similar cases that have succeeded.

Yours faithfully,

[polar_opposite]

Since submitting the above correspondence, I have received a response from Credit Style Ltd which reads as follows:

Our Client: Smart Parking Limited

Account Number: #######

Amount Outstanding: £170.00

We have now received our Client's response to the query you raised in respect of the above account. Our Client has instructed us as follows:-

We can confirm that we do not currently issue charges under PoFA. Instead we are required to request the keeper details within 28 days of the contravention date, and then issue the charge promptly once these have been received. We can confirm that the contravention occurred on 15th January 2023 and the charge was issued to the motorist on 1st February 2023. Therefore we have acted appropriately in line with the BPA code of practice. Please continue to pursue.

In the circumstances we now require payment of the above amount within seven days of the date of this letter, failing which we are instructed to proceed with legal action as previously advised.

Yours sincerely

Credit Style Limited

Annoyingly, Credit Style Limited are up to their usual tricks by dating the response letter as 23rd January 2024 and setting a seven-day deadline. I received the response on the 3rd February 2024, 4 days after the proposed deadline (not that I intend to pay anyway).

Please can anyone confirm if their response is legitimate and what my next steps are?

Is it a case of sitting tight and waiting for the next step of the process?

Thank you in advance.

Fruitcake

You should not have ignored the original PCN. That advice has not been given here since the law changed in 2012.  Had you appealed you would have then killed this off at PoPLA.

Never mind, that cannot now be helped.

You are now in ignore mode unless you get a court claim, which is very unlikely. Smart don't normally do court, and I doubt they would start with a one off PCN where the keeper cannot be held liable.

polar_opposite

Thanks for your reply. Fair enough about not ignoring it, I must have misread something at the time when the fine was issued. I was annoyed that I'd received the PCN after the "pay within 14 days or it doubles" ultimatum so it must have clouded my judgement. Sit tight and wait and see I suppose...

polar_opposite

Hi all, I am moving house soon and need clarification on what to do with regards to who to notify.

- Smart Parking Ltd?
- Debt Recovery Plus Ltd?
- CST Law?

All 3? 2 of the 3 (Smart Parking Ltd & CST Law)? 

As a precaution I will be forwarding my post for the next 3 months to my new address.

Le_Kirk

The normal advice is to send a Data Rectification Notice to the DPO at Smart informing them of your new address for service as from DD/MN/YYYY and requiring them to ERASE your old data and to inform all and any of their sub-contractors and agents.  To be doubly sure you could inform CST Law but I would not bother with the debt collector!