Small claims court guidance from UKPC and DCB Legal

Ameliebear23

Hi everyone, 

After extensive reading of this amazing forum and all the sticky threads that are available I was after some further advice on my next steps to contest this.

I have received a PCN for 'parking in a designated disabled persons space without displaying a valid disabled persons badge in the prescribed manner'. 

Firstly, I was not the driver of the vehicle, it was my boyfriend. There were apparently no regular parking spaces available in the whole of the retail park apart from multiple disabled ones. He had been looking for around 20 minutes near to Christmas. He decided to quickly nip into boots which took all of 5 minutes and in this time my vehicle has been captured.  

I did receive the initial PCN's from UKPC in the post but given that it was a private parking company (PPC) I decided to ignore them and I actually binned them. (I am now aware this was the wrong move). I ignored all correspondence from them and DCB legal until I got a letter from DCB legal stating their intention to start legal proceedings in a letter of claim. 

I then read some advice online which said that the blue badge scheme does not apply on private land and they are bound by the jurisdiction of the equality act 2010 which has to take into account conditions that are covered by protected characteristics. I have rheumatoid arthritis which is what is known as a progressive condition and sometimes I can be in excruciating pain. Apparently this is a protected characteristic and they can not discriminate just because I didn't display a badge. 

Initially, I thought that I should email and tell them of my intention to fight this charge because of my aforementioned condition which I thought would be a more worthy reason than allowing my boyfriend to fight this but I am now unsure whether this was the right thing to do?

Here is the email I sent to DCB Legal and a few questions I have after this are written below: 

'Dear DCB Legal, 

In response to your letter of claim on behalf of your client, UKPC, I do not appreciate your need to pursue any alleged debts owed to UKPC. I must inform you that if you do issue a claim, I will be defending it robustly. I am well aware of your modus operandi and am educated enough to know how to handle your scattergun approach to firing off claims. I am also aware that your claims are usually baseless and they rely on hope that the recipient will be intimated into paying the demanded amount. These scare tactics will not wash with me and under the jurisdiction of the equality act, you will not succeed in a court of law. I have evidence to support my legal entitlement to use this space and pursuing this further would class as disability discrimination. Therefore, I suggest that you stop wasting our time with what we both know will result in a discontinuation before any claim reaches court. You may as well save your client the court fee and concentrate on other, more gullible victims of your robo-claims instead of chasing after me. I will not be making any payment to you or engaging in any negotiation with regard to this matter. Should you proceed with a claim on behalf of UKPC, I will defend it and seek to recover all costs incurred as a result.'

Having researched a little further it appears that a better way to go would have been to get them to prove that I was the driver. The email above doesn't give them grounds to lawfully prosecute me as the driver does it? Also, I have read that under section 4 of the POFA 2012 that a postal PCN must be received within 14 days of the issue date (22/12/2023) if they intend to prosecute the registered keeper which I am 99% sure it wasn't. Am I entitled on lawful grounds to ask UKPC to provide me with the initial PCN to ascertain whether they sent it within the 14 day period or will they just change the dates to suit their own defence?

I have now sent off my AOS to the MCOL as per the sticky threads and am now about to prepare my defence but wanted answers to the above questions before I prepare this. 

Any help on this matter would be really appreciated 

Fruitcake

If you were an occupant of the car and had a medical condition classed as protected characteristics as defined by the EA 2010, then you had every right to use an accessible bay, irrespective of who was driving, as long as you left the vehicle to use the on site facilities/shops etcetera.
You are correct that the BB scheme does not apply on private land, but it is only one way of indicating that an occupant of the vehicle has protected characteristics and entitled to use an accessible bay. An absence of BB does not mean an absence of a disability.

UKPC have no legal right to know the driver's name, and no right to ask for it, (VCS v Edward applies).

Plan A is always a complaint to the landowner, and it is never too late to do so. Where did the alleged event occur? It may have cropped up on this forum before.

What is the issue date of the claim form?

Please post a copy of the claim form showing the particulars of claim, but redact all personal data, especially Government Gateway Log on/Password details.

As long as you follow the advice here, it is unlikely that this will ever get to court. Have a look at the several hundred cases in the DCBL list of discontinuances by regular poster @Umkomaas for encouragement.

DCB LEGAL RECORD OF PRIVATE PARKING COURT CLAIM DISCONTINUATIONS — MoneySavingExpert Forum

 

Gr1pr

Redact the claim form and post a picture, doing exactly the same as this person below , redacting 5 items in total 

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6537800/parked-in-a-disabled-bay-no-ticket#latest

I assume that the claim is in your own name and that you are the registered keeper. ?  Yes. ?

If yes, did that first postal NTK PCN letter comply in full with POFA 2012 , in both timescales and wording. ?  Yes or No. ?

If it did they are pursuing you as the Registered Keeper, regardless of what the driver did or didn't do 

Even if you had a blue badge, its for your benefit and not so he could use a disabled bay for his own purposes, if he is able bodied. The signage would have required a valid blue badge to be displayed, hence why you received a PCN in the post 

On what date was the AOS done. ?

Do not ask UKPC for anything at the moment 

Coupon-mad

Sounds to me like you were not in the car.

Why did the driver think it was OK to park in (and block) an accessible bay?

Ameliebear23

Gr1pr said:

Redact the claim form and post a picture, doing exactly the same as this person below , redacting 5 items in total 

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6537800/parked-in-a-disabled-bay-no-ticket#latest

I assume that the claim is in your own name and that you are the registered keeper. ?  Yes. ?

If yes, did that first postal NTK PCN letter comply in full with POFA 2012 , in both timescales and wording. ?  Yes or No. ?

If it did they are pursuing you as the Registered Keeper, regardless of what the driver did or didn't do 

Even if you had a blue badge, its for your benefit and not so he could use a disabled bay for his own purposes, if he is able bodied. The signage would have required a valid blue badge to be displayed, hence why you received a PCN in the post 

On what date was the AOS done. ?

Do not ask UKPC for anything at the moment 

Thank you for your swift reply and informative information. I really appreciate your help. 

The claim is in my name and I am the registered keeper. 

With regard to the postal NTK from UKPC, I am pretty sure it did not comply with the timescale element of the POFA 2012. I am 99% sure this was received at the very least 3 weeks after the Issue date. But because I have ripped this up and put it in the bin I now have no way of finding out. Unless I contact UKPC and get them to send the original?

The AOS was completed on the 22nd June. 

KeithP

With a Claim Issue Date of 17th June, and having filed an Acknowledgment of Service in a timely manner, you have until 4pm on Monday 22nd July 2024 to file your Defence.

That's over three weeks 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'.

Coupon-mad

Unless I contact UKPC and get them to send the original?

No.          

Ameliebear23

Fruitcake said:

If you were an occupant of the car and had a medical condition classed as protected characteristics as defined by the EA 2010, then you had every right to use an accessible bay, irrespective of who was driving, as long as you left the vehicle to use the on site facilities/shops etcetera.
You are correct that the BB scheme does not apply on private land, but it is only one way of indicating that an occupant of the vehicle has protected characteristics and entitled to use an accessible bay. An absence of BB does not mean an absence of a disability.

UKPC have no legal right to know the driver's name, and no right to ask for it, (VCS v Edward applies).

Plan A is always a complaint to the landowner, and it is never too late to do so. Where did the alleged event occur? It may have cropped up on this forum before.

What is the issue date of the claim form?

Please post a copy of the claim form showing the particulars of claim, but redact all personal data, especially Government Gateway Log on/Password details.

As long as you follow the advice here, it is unlikely that this will ever get to court. Have a look at the several hundred cases in the DCBL list of discontinuances by regular poster @Umkomaas for encouragement.

DCB LEGAL RECORD OF PRIVATE PARKING COURT CLAIM DISCONTINUATIONS — MoneySavingExpert Forum

 

Thanks for your swift reply and all the information you have provided. You will now see below a picture of the claim particulars including the issue date and the location. 

I have to confess I wasn't actually an occupant of the car at the time of the claim. I just assumed that it might be better to fight it from my perspective seeing as I am the one with the condition and not my boyfriend. Will they have CCTV evidence available to disprove this at all? I am well aware that he shouldn't have used the space but everybody was doing the same thing. It is a car park that has far too many disabled spots in relation to normal spaces. Probably for this exact reason.  

I don't believe that I received the PCN from UKPC within 14 days but can't tell because I ripped these letters up. Is it worth chasing UKPC to get them to send me the original charge to see if I have a case per the POFA 2012?

Could I still write to the landowner even now as I did believe based upon a sticky thread that this stage may have now passed me by? 

Many thanks again

Ameliebear23

Coupon-mad said:

Sounds to me like you were not in the car.

Why did the driver think it was OK to park in (and block) an accessible bay?

I have informed him of the error of his ways. We are both now jointly paying the price by wasting our time trying to fight this case. That said, the car park has an absolutely disproportionate amount of disabled bays in relation to normal ones and part of me thinks its for this exact reason. 

What would you advise our next steps are? I am 99% sure that we received the initial PCN towards the end of January and as such would be outside of the 14 day period allowed for a RTK to pay as per the POFA 2012. Should I contact UKPC and get them to send me the original and plead ignorance to the fact that we received it. Surely, I am entitled to this as part of my court defence?

Many thanks

Gr1pr

If you recall that the PCN failed to comply with POFA, then it definitely should have been appealed on the no keeper liability basis at the time, so should be defended on that same recollection now, especially if you can definitely state that you were the registered keeper, but not the driver at the time, in your defence ( you are defending yourself, the driver is not really a party in these proceedings. )

So you have no liability in law, UNLESS that PCN was fully compliant with POFA, meaning that the claimant must prove it, you don't have to prove anything, but you can deny liability, so for now do NOT try to obtain a copy of the PCN 

In future, do NOT rip up demands for payment from UK companies, get advice first, capiche. ?  It would have been a lot easier to deal with at the time, with help from here 

I would suggest that the claim has been inflated by at least £70 , but the defence template deals with that aspect for everyone, its already disputed, so concentrate on the few paragraphs that YOU must alter, the first half a dozen or so, once the AOS has been done online , which you say was done a week ago 

Ameliebear23

Gr1pr said:

If you recall that the PCN failed to comply with POFA, then it definitely should have been appealed on the no keeper liability basis at the time, so should be defended on that same recollection now, especially if you can definitely state that you were the registered keeper, but not the driver at the time, in your defence ( you are defending yourself, the driver is not really a party in these proceedings. )

So you have no liability in law, UNLESS that PCN was fully compliant with POFA, meaning that the claimant must prove it, you don't have to prove anything, but you can deny liability, so for now do NOT try to obtain a copy of the PCN 

In future, do NOT rip up demands for payment from UK companies, get advice first, capiche. ?  It would have been a lot easier to deal with at the time, with help from here 

I would suggest that the claim has been inflated by at least £70 , but the defence template deals with that aspect for everyone, its already disputed, so concentrate on the few paragraphs that YOU must alter, the first half a dozen or so, once the AOS has been done online , which you say was done a week ago 

I totally understand what you are saying, so yes I do capiche and lesson learnt

I am pretty confident that the PCN failed to comply with the 14 day POFA registered keeper notice but 6 months is a long time ago and I'm now worried. Lets say they did comply with the timeframe and all other particulars of the act, would that mean I am then liable?

Am I correct in saying that in order to comply with the timescale of the POFA 2012, I should have received the PCN by 06/01/2024 if the issue date was 22/12/2023?