Help with defence against DCB

defender001

My question was basically this: their response to my defence is a 27 paragraph doc. I have a draft to post here which is their 27 paragraphs interleaved with my thoughts on each point (quite a long post). I'm still on the bridge on what's the value of sharing that publicly. If they monitor this, then they can 100% associate this thread back to my case.

Some of their text feels standard template, but others are tailored to points I raised in the defence. Is it worth sharing all of it here? Or focusing more on what's next and how to prepare?

Coupon-mad

No we don't need to see their template WS but who signed it?

What do they say about the app that wasn't working?

What do they say about your rights as a freeholder?

defender001

Got it.

This was signed by a solicitor at DCB Legal.

The parts which I believe are templated are those such as:
- the defendant remains liable
- the defence was templated so we don't accept any of it (it wasn't; most of it is about my specifics)
- it doesn't matter whether you were driving; you are keeper and were either the driver or nominated the driver
- we are allowed to claim this because of Beavis
- our POC doesn't breach CPRs
- we're nominated by the landowner to pursue this
- we're allowed to charge interest, and all extra cost is because claimant broke contract and didn't "just pay"
- DLUHC has no relevance as it was withdrawn in Feb'22 to come back in June'24 (my PCN happened in July'24; did they even look this up?)
- sum is adequate
- there was adequate opportunity for dispute (i wholeheartedly disagree)
- won't pay witness compensation; defendant must prove this incurred costs
- the signs were good and readable (i disagree, and they later changed to Beavis-like colours)
- etc

To the specifics, they raised points such as:
- estate rentcharge means nothing (i disagree; it at least supports they can't charge the maximum allowed)
- defendant has to prove the app wasn't working (i can prove there were repeated issues which still persist)
- claimant denies harassment (I feel harassed by the wording in their letters and can support this by the Government's guidelines on what constitutes creditor harassment)

To recap: my main goals are to (a) get this thrown out; and (b) get a ruling that charging £100 when residents already pay for road/grounds maintenance, parking enforcement (including the Elite employee that goes around  giving residents tickets!), parking signage, app contracts, and a fee every time a PCN is issued, is unacceptable.

Coupon-mad

"DLUHC has no relevance as it was withdrawn in Feb'22 to come back in June'24 (my PCN happened in July'24; did they even look this up?)"

They didn't need to look it up. They are talking about a completely different Code in 2024 = the industry's own (PPC biased) version. The DLUHC Code doesn't exist, so they are right with that bit.

The burden is theirs to prove the app was working. What evidence for that did they attach? 

defender001

They did not provide any. They just said the burden is on me. Which I think is preferable; they could say “it was working on our end and here are some valid sessions” which proves it may have been working in _some_ cases. What matters is that it didn’t work for me (and I have emails from the estate agent to show that due to repeated technical issues the app was being replaced; and a few months later it got replaced again). Even the latest app is having issues and this time I’ve been recording the phone screen to show the faults. The latest app also had behavioural changes (like session expiration notifications not popping up for longer sessions) which the developer confirmed was an unexpected change.

My question is: what’s next? Do I just wait for the court to respond to their response or do I need to proactively do something? Also, do you recommend I get a solicitor to help at this point or should I be ok on my own?

Gr1pr

If you have not submitted your own WS bundle then you must do so before the WS deadline, typically around 2 to 4 weeks before the hearing date,  so what is the WS deadline date. ?  When is the hearing date. ?

The court wont be responding,  either the case goes to a hearing in front of a judge, or it doesn't  ( if th hearing fee is not paid, the hearing is vacated. )

No you shouldn't need a  solicitor,  unless the claim was for over £600. ?

Which claimant private parking company. ?  I assume that DCB LEGAL are also involved. ?

I suggest that you provide a recap on the basic facts from the claim form and the court order,  plus alter the thread title to something more suitable like 

ELITE PARKING,  DCB LEGAL claim at hearing stage 

Alter the above Parking company name to the one suing you,  if required 

Coupon-mad

There is no way you need a solicitor and you can't get those costs back. You'll be fine.

As it is Elite Parking it is hard to know if this will be discontinued. Either way the worst case scenario for a single PCN case is paying about £212 if you lose. But they haven't provided any evidence that the app was working and your witness account (that it wasn't) carries more weight.

Car1980

Not much on Elite Parking & DCB Legal. Only cases I can find are:

• 2x wins in court because nobody turned up
• 1x discontinuance
• two big £1000+ claims (threads petered out with no news on what happened)

defender001

As always, thanks for all the responses! This is Elite and DCB Legal. Here's a recap of what happened:
- Elite issued a PCN and I appealed to them but they rejected the appeal.
- I didn't know I was supposed to appeal to POPLA, so I didn't.
- DCB Legal started writing their threatening letters.
- I called DCB Legal to tell them I didn't owe them anything and they had to stop.
- They kept writing and eventually filed a small courts claim.
- I acknowledged the receipt on MCOL and filed my defence in time.
- The court didn't process my defence and issued a judgment in default against me.
- I wrote to the court with proof of submitting my defence and eventually they rolled this back.
- We had a mediation call which obviously didn't go anywhere.
- The case got transferred to a local court.
- The judge ordered them to respond to my defence and they did.

Nothing else happened since. Should I update the thread title to "hearing stage"? I'm guessing they are not letting it go if they bothered responding to my defence. But I don't know what I'm supposed to do next.

I'm sincerely hoping this goes to court because I want to establish case precedence that charging £100 on a residential area where we already pay for everything is not acceptable nor enforceable.

1505grandad

" I want to establish case precedence that charging £100 on a residential area where we already pay for everything is not acceptable nor enforceable."

The following thread may be of interest:-

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6613087/pcns-issued-on-private-freehold-bays