Defence preparation for Euro car parks/DCB claim

akba

Dear Experts

I have a very similar claim to this one, with the following dates:

Date of alleged incident: 4 Apr 2024
Claim date: 13 Jun 2025
AOS submitted on: 19 Jun 2025


Claim is for overstay in a retail location, issued by DCB on behalf of Euro Card Parks.
The difference here is that I was not the driver. so I used paragraph 3 from the linked post (Without 3.1), and added the following to the paragraph 2 of the template:

"the vehicle is recognised and it is admitted that the Defendant was the registered keeper and not the driver."
The rest of my defence is exactly the same as the template.

Do I need to add anything else?
Just wanted to double check before I email it.

Thank you

Coupon-mad

I suggest you remove paragraphs 9-11 about the DLUHC because that's old news and I will be changing the template defence to remove that waffle this week.

akba

Thank you. So in summery, I used the paragraph 3 of the post and removed paragraphs 9 to 11. I have 27 paragraphs in my defence doc now.

Car1980

I'd tweak it to this (personally I hate the use of the word "admitted"):

...the vehicle is recognised. It is confirmed that the Defendant was the registered keeper but not the driver.

Have you any details about the day? Will the driver be submitting their own witness statement?

Just wary of a defence that confirms you were not the driver, therefore tacitly accept liability and won't/can't defend what happened on the day. Sometimes you can get a funny judge, even though they'll be discontinuing in the autumn anyway.

akba

Car1980 said:

I'd tweak it to this (personally I hate the use of the word "admitted"):

...the vehicle is recognised. It is confirmed that the Defendant was the registered keeper but not the driver.

Have you any details about the day? Will the driver be submitting their own witness statement?

Just wary of a defence that confirms you were not the driver, therefore tacitly accept liability and won't/can't defend what happened on the day. Sometimes you can get a funny judge, even though they'll be discontinuing in the autumn anyway.

Thank you for your input. I changed the wording from admit to confirm.
I have details about the day and the driver will submit their own statement. Does that cover the defence issue?

Coupon-mad

Was the overstay for a reason such as an elderly, disabled or pregnant driver or some other reason for delay that should be stated in the defence?

akba

Disabled driver, I will add that to 3.1. Thank you

Coupon-mad

More than that! Search the forum for 

Equality Act parking defence overstay

akba

I can't submit my defence using MCOL — I keep getting the following error:

"This field has invalid character. You cannot use < > ""

I've tried cleaning the defence text multiple times and removed all special characters, but it still doesn't work.
Has anyone had a similar experience?

UPDATE:
I had to remove a lot of characters from the template defence for it to finally accept the text.

One more question:
When filing the defence on MCOL, do I skip the counter claim part?

Le_Kirk

You do not want to counterclaim.

akba

One more question, is it ok to use MCOL to submit the defence or should I email it? I saw different opinions on the forum regarding this.