Parking Eye, DCB Legal Letter of Claim followed by Court Claim 2025

parkingeyenemesis

I’ve received a Letter of Claim from DCB Legal for two Parkingeye PCNs from parking in a poorly signed hospital car park in 2021.

I’ve read the initial posts in the newbies thread and have already emailed the hospital’s PALS address to ask them to cancel them.
I understand that I should also send the generic template from the second post in response to the letter of claim.

I’m not sure how to adapt it to my case though - the total claim is for £300 and unfortunately I threw away all the preceding letters so I don’t remember how much the original penalties were for.

Could anyone here help me understand how I can adapt the template for my case, if I’m not sure whether there is an additional £70 debt recovery fee?

Thank you!!

Coupon-mad

You don't need to change the LBC reply.

Le_Kirk

parkingeyenemesis said:

I’ve read the initial posts in the newbies thread and have already emailed the hospital’s PALS address to ask them to cancel them.

What did PALS do/say?

parkingeyenemesis

Le_Kirk said:

parkingeyenemesis said:

I’ve read the initial posts in the newbies thread and have already emailed the hospital’s PALS address to ask them to cancel them.

What did PALS do/say?

That they no longer have any contact with Parkingeye so I should contact them directly.

Do you know if there is anything I can do in this case? Are there any documents they could provide me that I could then send directly to Parkingeye for example?

Gr1pr

Just email the LoC response template to DCB Legal, then await a court claim pack from the CNBC in Northampton using MCOL 

parkingeyenemesis

Gr1pr said:

Just email the LoC response template to DCB Legal, then await a court claim pack from the CNBC in Northampton using MCOL 

Ok will do - is the info@ email address good enough?

Gr1pr

parkingeyenemesis said:

Gr1pr said:

Just email the LoC response template to DCB Legal, then await a court claim pack from the CNBC in Northampton using MCOL 

Ok will do - is the info@ email address good enough?

It should be,  especially if they reply 

Then deal with any court claim within the next few months,  that is when your case will be resolved 

parkingeyenemesis

I've had an email reply from DCB Legal. The main points they state are:

- Where the Parking Charge (PC) becomes overdue and before Court proceedings have commenced, a reasonable sum may be added for the debt recovery fees. The correct recovery fees have been added and will not be removed. As such, the outstanding balance of £300.00 remains payable to prevent further action. The HMRC ‘VAT Supply and Consideration manual’ (VATSC06140), confirmed that parking charge notices falls out of the scope of VAT.
- Please note, the amount owed is a genuine pre-estimate of the losses incurred in managing the parking location to ensure compliance with the clearly displayed terms and conditions.

And then they ask for payment again.

Is there anything I should do at this stage? Thanks again in advance for any help!

Coupon-mad

Search the forum for the obvious keyword from that reply.  Copy the HMRC reports made.

parkingeyenemesis

Update: I received a letter HM Courts & Tribunals Service this week.

This is despite the hospital (the landowner) finally emailing Parking Eye to request the claims be dropped.

In the meantime I've also submitted a freedom of information request and discovered that the structure of the contract was:
- 100% of parking ticket revenue went to the hospital
- 100% of PCN revenue went to ParkingEye
This seems like grossly misaligned incentives for a car park at an NHS hospital! 

So, what's the best course of action? If you guys have any input on the following that would be amazing:
1. First and foremost, how do I respond to the letter?
2. I'm keen to put in a counter claim at this point, especially since I've already emailed them twice about the hospital requesting the claim be dropped. I don't think it should be risk free for them to just keep pursuing cases like this! Any pointers here?
3. Maybe it's too much but ideally I'd like to create pressure for them to drop all outstanding charges resulting from this parking contract (and maybe even refund some?!), because the incentive structure seems like a blatant disregard for public interest. I'll start by contacting my MP, any other ideas?

Gr1pr

Post the issue date from the top right of the claim form below 

Did DCB Legal issue the claim   on behalf of Parking Eye   ?  ( or only Parking Eye   )

Post a redacted picture of the POC on the lower left of the claim form after hiding the VRM details first 

Study the second post in the newbies sticky thread in announcements near the top of the forum,  plus study the defence template thread in announcements too 

Do not rush this,  wait for replies after giving us the required information first

Think about those other actions after dealing with the first stages of the claim,  due to the deadlines