DCB Legal LOC Letter

BBMSEUser2025

Hi All,

Thanks for all this information and for everyone's contributions to all the threads. I have hopefully read everything I should have in the Newbies forum so hopefully I won't cause any duplications of efforts here. 

A bit of background : We are a retailer in a shopping complex in London. Our Lanlords own all the surrounding land and parking spaces. We have several loading bays on site with a time limit of 20 minutes which we often use to drop of stock etc for our store. For various reasons and due to multiple trips often needed 20 minutes is never enough to offload a vehicle. In any case we were issued a ticket for not loading in a loading zone. In my opinion this is incorrect as we were loading but we did spend longer than the 20 minute allowance onsite. A ticket was never attached to our vehicle. It was from UK Parking Control Ltd. We asked for our landlords agents for assistance but we didn't get a response before the time to appeal had passed. In any case we started getting letters from Direct Collection Bailiffs Ltd with the £170 fine which we have mostly ignored. Early on we did write to them by email to explain that we would be seeking for this to be set aside as our Lanlords who is the landowner is likely to instruct their client (UKPC Ltd) to abandon the claim. They responded that they can only take instuxtion from UKPC and that they refuse to further communicate with us via email and that we should call them. We replied that we won't call them and that due to our communication needs we only accept electronic responses from them. They never responded again. 

We then received another letter by post again demanding payment of £170 before further steps are taken which we ignored. 

Then after that we received a Letter of Claim (LOC) from DCB Legal stating a response within 30 days is required. The Newbies thread says that we shouldn't ignore this one and that I should start a post here which bring me to the response I have written below from the template which I hope someone can just check over and let me know if I have missed anything, and also I'm going to ignore their request for filing in information online (I did see in the thread we are not obliged to do that)  : 

Dear Sirs,

Your Ref. Xxx

Proposed Legal Proceedings

Claimant: UK Parking Control Ltd

I refer to your your letter of claim.

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

Xxx

Xx

Xx

The alleged debt is disputed and any court proceedings will be vigorously defended.

I am sourcing and seeking independent debt advice and as such, I formally request that this matter be put on hold for an additional 30 days, in accordance with the Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims 2017 ('the PAP').

I note that the amount being claimed has increased by a hugely exaggerated amount which the Government called "extorting money from motorists".

Don't send me your usual blather about that.

A complaint has been made to Related Argent (landowner and our landlord) who do not support the charge and are contacting UK Parking Control Limited to cancel it. 

I have two questions, and under the PAP I am entitled to specific answers:

1. Am I to understand that the additional £70 represents what you lot dress up as a 'Debt Recovery' fee, and if so, is this nett or inclusive of VAT? If the latter, would you kindly explain why I am being asked to pay the operator’s VAT?

2. With regard to the principal alleged PCN sum: Is this damages, or will it be pleaded as consideration for parking?

Yours faithfully

Xx

Couple of questions: 

1. Any comments if necessary? 

2.  Is there any benefit in waiting to respond to this say for a week or two or shall I send this off ASAP (we received this 3rd of Jan so deadline is end of Jan) 

In the mean time I'm also trying to pursue the landlords agents to put us in touch with the right person in the landlords office to help sort this. 

Many Thanks All, 

Gr1pr

1) use the response template 

2) replying near the deadline means that another month is added before the inevitable court claim arrives in due course 

3) definitely try to get the landowner or management company or whoever to get it cancelled , plan A

BBMSEUser2025

Thanks @Gr1pr

1. I thought that the above is the template which I just amended

So I haven't send the response yet but did raise this further with the landlord and within a few minutes received the below, which isn't from DCB Legal but Direct Collection Bailiffs (DCB Ltd) so not sure if this is resolved 100% or not ... I'll include the email below I just got to DCB Legal and update when I get a response.

Email I just received : 

Dear XXX,

We write further to your recent email.

Please note, our client has instructed us to close this case and as such, DCBL will not be pursuing this balance further.

Any future correspondence relating to this matter should be sent to our client directly.

Thank you for your co-operation.

Kind Regards,

 

XX

Collections Associate

Direct Collection Bailiffs Ltd

Coupon-mad

That sounds good.  Now email:

appealmoreinfo@ukparkingcontrol.com

and ask them if DCB Ltd's letter means that this PCN is cancelled?  Tell them that you are a retailer on site, and if ever they sue your company you will counterclaim for wasted staff time and compensatory damages for abuse of the company's DVLA data, which was obtained without reasonable cause.