PCN County Court Claim Defence Advice

MW33

Hello Coupon-mad

Many thanks for your response and I'm sorry if I sound doubting about the potential outcome for my case but I'm not really, having seen so much evidence and with the help from you and other forum members I do believe what you suggest will be the outcome.

What about my WS though, I was leaving it to the last possible minute as you suggest but it is due this Thursday 20/11/25 so I'm assuming I must have one prepared to send on that day just in case they don't discontinue before then. If so, my quandary regarding the thrust and content of my WS is still there for me.

Coupon-mad

If I'm correct in my case it is difficult to state much other than what is in my defence as I am relying on not being the driver and not trying to make a case about signs or other things that may be relevant had I been the driver at the time.

I can make additional points about the signs as I think the usual issue of small text is relevant and the terms and conditions I believe are ambiguous for my circumstances, I can also make some good points about security being present in a hut at the entrance to the site which is controlled by a security barrier which can lead to a driver thinking they have been given authorisation to park as they have been let into the premises (my PCN is for no authorisation to park).

However, as I was not the driver neither of those arguments seem relevant as I'm not arguing those things affected me.

What you are missing is that the signage failings HAVE affected you because you are being sued under keeper liability law!

To do that, there must be 'adequate notice' of prominent parking terms and £100 PCN as a pre-requisite of the POFA Schedule 4. Without that, the PCN does not pass POFA Sch 4.

MW33

Hello Coupon-mad

I'm so sorry, I understand your point, I think I an suffering a little from having digested so much information of the last few weeks I have far too many potential options for the way forward and have missed/forgotten the obvious one.

So am I correct in thinking this is why you have confidence they will discontinue? Also, if I don't see evidence of that before Thursday am I correct in thinking I will still need to submit my WS? And, if I do need to submit my WS I'm thinking based on what you say it won't need to be that lengthy because I'm relying on the simple argument you cite?

Many thanks once again.

Coupon-mad

We are confident they'll discontinue because DCB Legal always do in MET cases.

MW33

Hello Coupon-mad

Thank you for your reply, I really appreciate it with it being so late too.

I will check with the court tomorrow and keep you updated.

MW33

Hello Coupon-mad

I have today made contact with the courts, both the court where the hearing is at and the Civil National Business Centre and they have confirmed there is no record of the trial fee being paid by the due date of yesterday, however, with the caveat that sometimes it takes longer than the next day for payments to be updated on their system so I still can't be sure the fee hasn't been paid.

This does concern me as I feel I'm unlikely to be sure the case is either discontinued or struck out before I have to submit my WS which is in less than 2 days time, this Thursday 20/11/25.

Would you kindly be able to confirm if I should still prepare a WS just in case because if I should then after all the effort put into the case from myself and yourselves I would like to ensure I make my best efforts right up to the final stage before hearing which would mean me asking you to kindly review my WS.

On another note, in your last post you said "We are confident they'll discontinue because DCB Legal always do in MET cases". The claimant in my case is Euro Car Parks Limited and I'm not sure if they are the same as MET and perhaps that is what you meant, apologies if I've misunderstood.

Many thanks again

Gr1pr

They almost always discontinue in numerous cases,  including ECP, MET PARKING, UKPC, SMART PARKING cases

But not in VCS, EXCEL,  TCP cases etc

The CNBC have not been involved for several months,  it's your local civil court that you deal with 

If no payment was made by the deadline,  which has passed already, then the N279 discontinuation document should arrive by email in your inbox or spam folder,  if its not there already, so check BOTH folders for it

If the WS deadline is in the future,  hang fire on that topic, what date is that deadline   ?

MW33

Hello Gr1pr

Thank you for your response.

I am checking my email and spam/junk folders several times a day so I'll definitely be on top of things from that perspective.

I contacted my local court this morning regarding confirmation of payment of the trial fee and they said they couldn't deal with my query as it was dealt with by CNBC. So I contacted CNBC and it was them who confirmed there was no record of payment on their system but did caveat that with the information that not all payments are updated by the next day so I still don't have conclusive proof of non payment.

As I'm still concerned about submitting my WS on time I again phoned my local court and with a bit of gentle persuasion and luckily a kind member of staff they also did a check and made the same comment as CNBC, no record of payment but some payments still to be updated, they also confirmed they look at the same system as CNBC for this information.

In the Directions section of my Notice of Allocation to the Small Claims Track (Hearing) it states the WS must be delivered no later than fourteen days before the hearing. My hearing is 05/12/25 so I work out the date for delivery of the WS to be end of business this Thursday 20/11/25, hence my concern.

I really appreciate any advice.

the_worm_that_turned

Hi MW33 - I truly sympathise with you in relation to this. All the loss of your time and stress you have suffered at the hands of these people. You were not even the driver!!

You say they sent a Notice to Keeper. Was it fully compliant with the POFA requirements? 

MW33

Hello the_worm_that_turned

Thanks for your response.

Forgive me if I'm a little unsure regarding compliance, I have not fully homed in on my particular NTK as I was unsure from the beginning if that was my full argument but I gathered from the forum members responses that it was part of a number of legal arguments in my defence being most of it was copied from the template/suggested defences on this site.

I have checked that it was served within 14 days and that it is headed NTK but I would need to do quite a bit more research or should I say re-research to be sure there aren't any other compliance defects.

I appreciate you picking up on the stress this has caused me and it is mainly down to feeling I must fight something on principle because I didn't do anything and knew nothing about this as the car was in the hands of my mechanic, and, the fact that he didn't do anything wrong either, he works on numerous cars every day without parking issues and I still don't know to this day what transgression was made other than a photo of the car entering and leaving the industrial park!

Many thanks for your time