Clarification on Newbie instructions - VCS Bristol Airport fee

Fruitcake

cutlero said:

KeithP said:

That simply is not true.
I am sure there is no sign that says "No Pick Up or Drop Off at any time regardless of whether you stop at traffic lights or not".

These are the signs they're referring to, placed exactly in the location where you... have to stop. How someone is supposed to read those while driving when they're positioned out of view of any driver is unknown to me.

I've only just revisited this image.
It was taken in 2019 I believe. It was not taken at the location where the pedestrian controlled crossing is situated.
The image above shows the road is straight immediately before a crossing that no longer exists. The CCTV images taken at the crossing will show amongst other things that the road immediately beforehand is curved,  and that there are no signs stating no pickup or drop off at that location, (unless they have been added recently).

Anyway, that's all for later.
In your draft defence you state you were not the driver, bylaws apply, and therefore the keeper cannot be held liable in accordance with Sch 4 of The PoFA 2012.

At some point, VCS will state they are not using the PoFA, and indeed they don't have to, but they can't ignore its requirements. It is an Act of Parliament, the law, and applies to both parties whether they like it or not.

Coupon-mad

Coupon-mad said:

An application with a hearing costs £303.  The internet is out of date.  It's going up to £313 on April 1st.

You COULD apply and tick 'without a hearing' for £119 (probably also going up a tenner on 1st April).

Personally, as you can prove you were abroad, there's no need for a CCJ set aside hearing and I'd do a £119 application, using VCS v Carr (Court of Appeal authority that a case MUST be set aside if the D didn't see it and has grounds to defend) and proof that you were in New Zealand and attach a decent draft defence to the claim.

"You know what, let's go. Because !!!!!! those guys.  Will try this."

First thing to do is send your proof of being abroad to the solicitor TOMORROW and ask them to join with you and consent to the set aside to save some costs. Give them till Friday to agree.

That way it definitely only costs £119 (or £129 if you miss doing it by 31st March) in court fees. Then you can defend.

cutlero

OK I submitted the N244 with a draft defence and the evidence to show we were out of the country for the month around 9 days ago. I got an automated response a couple of days later (26th March) from the court bascally to say 'we have received your application' but nothing since.

We have until the 17th April to pay the CCJ if we want to be able to remove the CCJ from the credit report. Should I be taking action, like calling the court to check on the application or is that pointless?

I didn't see @Coupon-mad response until today, so I have today sent DCBLegal the evidence and asked them to respond by the end of the week if possible.

Coupon-mad

It's too late. You can't do that now.

cutlero

UPDATE

We managed to get the default CCJ set aside (the application costs £305 these days which is slightly more than anticipated). We did not get our costs back during this hearing. We now have 14 days to file our full defence with the court. Hopefully, we will be able to get our money back for the set aside hearing if we win the actual case?
I will post my draft defence on here a few days before I send it, in case any of the experienced people on this thread have any helpful notes/comments. Thanks to everyone who has helped so far

Coupon-mad

cutlero said:

UPDATE

We managed to get the default CCJ set aside (the application costs £305 these days which is slightly more than anticipated). We did not get our costs back during this hearing. We now have 14 days to file our full defence with the court. Hopefully, we will be able to get our money back for the set aside hearing if we win the actual case?

Not if your Judge made 'no order as to costs'. If so, they have closed that door on you. 

cutlero

Ah that's not great news. I'm wondering whether it's still worth me mentioning this in the defence to highlight how unreasonable they have been regardless. The judge ordered no costs because she said we should have not gone to the hearing and instead agreed when DCBL "offered to agree" to have the CCJ set aside.

To be clear, I asked DCBLegal to agree to set this aside. They did not respond to us in writing for 30 days - a month, by which time the deadline to pay the CCJ had passed and we had had to pay the court fees to get this set aside. We can't afford the bad credit score. We didn't receive their first email, even if we had it was a month too late. What we did receive was a follow-up email three days before the hearing detailing that they would agree to set the judgement aside as long as we do not seek costs and don't disclose info about the case. The judge ruled no costs because she said we should have responded to their offer that we received three days prior (the offer which forces us to lose the money anyway), but she didn't allow us to explain (or even speak tbh) that they did not respond to us for a month leading to us paying the court fees.

We contacted citizens advice to see what we should do in this situation to try and find out whether we should wait for a response and they indicated that that would not be good. We made every effort as people who aren't familiar with the court process to take the right steps, which perhaps we didn't manage to do.

I understand that that might not be a great defence and if we lose the money, it's not the end of the world, but for some people it actually is! I hate that they can use a large law firm to enact all of these shady strategies against people who aren't legally trained. It's sick.

But if it will look poorly to include this in the defence, I will leave it out.

Le_Kirk

You are defending (presumably) the underlying claim so what happened with the set-aside is in the past!

cutlero

Le_Kirk said:

You are defending (presumably) the underlying claim so what happened with the set-aside is in the past!

Hi Le_Kirk,

Thanks for your response!

I'm currently arguing that they have no legal standing to pursue me as the registered keeper on non-relevant land under POFA, that stopping at red lights cannot be subject to a parking penalty because it's the law, and that they have acted extremely unreasonably, among other things, as is argued in the template defence. I understand that the CCJ is a separate matter, and you are correct in thinking that I am trying to defend the underlying case, but I am wondering whether mentioning that we were forced to have to apply to set-aside a default judgement is worth mentioning in support of the claim they have acted unreasonably during the underlying dispute. Even if not to get our money back, but just to show the unnecessary harm. They didn't have any communications with us for five months and gave no warning before serving the claim during this time. Then claimed we should have told them that we were going on a holiday we hadn't even booked at the time of our latest communication in Sept 2024 - for a case that has no legal basis in the first place, which is something they're more than aware of.

So in this context is mentioning the CCJ relevant for the underlying case at all?

Coupon-mad

Yes you could mention it - as evidence of wholly unreasonable conduct - but you can't get the £303 back because that first judge did not allow costs. She was wrong. Some judges just don't get it.

You could separately (afterwards) try suing the landowner for causing you a £303 loss due to the conduct of their agents but that's complicated.

Why do you rely so heavily on the POFA? Because you weren't driving? If you were the driver, the POFA/not relevant land argument is pretty much redundant.