Fine and the CCJ process

HaydenB

Last year I overstayed in a car park for one minute and received a parking fine, which I have appealed and informed today that it’s been rejected. So, I either pay up or they will take me to court.

I never denied overstaying in the car park and provided the mitigating factors behind this.

On the day that I attempted to park my car in this parking lot, I made every possible attempt to pay for parking. The day in question was soon after the passing of my mother and my son’s grandma. We were both deep in grief and I suspect this had an impact on the day also. On arrival, I reached in my bag and realised that I had forgotten my wallet and my cash.

My son is disabled and was being particularly awkward.  It took me several minutes to calm him down at which point I ran to the ticket machine to get the information I needed to download the parking app. 

On returning to the car, my son was again being very distracting. The Internet signal was poor, but I eventually managed to get the app downloaded. Once the parking app had downloaded, I had to return to the machine to find the correct parking code.

Once back at the car I attempted to register two separate cards to pay for the parking which unfortunately would not be accepted. I’m not sure if there was an internet or an app issue.

I then decided to go to the cash machine to get cash to pay for parking. I spent several minutes trying to persuade my disabled son to leave the car, but he refused. I was left with no choice but to abandon our parking attempt and leave.

If they reviewed the CCTV in the carpark, they would see me walking back and forth to the machine, holding my phone in the air to try get a signal, attempting to get my son to leave the car, then eventually abandoning our attempts to park and leaving. But they have refused to.

We never once left the car (my son was in it) and we never once left the carpark itself. I tried so hard to purchase a parking ticket but once all attempts had failed, we left.

They allow 10 minutes and consider this a reasonable amount of time to acquire a parking ticket or leave. According to their letter we were there for 11 minutes in total. I would argue that given my circumstances it was not unreasonable to have taken me 1 minute longer than the time allowed to reach the decision to leave. I tried so hard to purchase a ticket and did NOT once leave the carpark.

I am happy for this to go to court but need to understand the CCJ process. I cannot afford to have a CCJ on my credit file for various reasons. Will a CCJ automatically be assigned to me. Or will one only be given should I lose in court? Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

Voyager2002

Assuming that a court rules against you, you then have one month in which to pay the full amount awarded (including legal costs). It is only if some of that money remains outstanding that you have a CCJ on your record.

If you choose to dispute this, the absolute worst case is that you end up paying the full amount, plus court fees, plus the other side's legal costs, plus the cost of your own legal advice, and of course you lose the time spent preparing for the hearing and actually attending court. So long as you can settle all these costs you do not need to worry about a CCJ.

DE_612183

1. It's not a fine
2. Read the newbies thread
3. These are rogue companies - they do not take any mitigation into account - why would they?
4. Don't pay and don't admit to driving
5. Which PPC and which car park - chances are there are other treads similar to your where the OP has not ended up paying anything let alone getting a CCJ

Car1980

To receive a CCJ you would need to fail to respond to the claim form or lose in court AND still fail to pay within 28 days.

The vast vast majority of court claims are discontinued anyway at the eleventh hour. 

Brie

Step one is to ask the property owner/shop to get the PCN cancelled.  Point out that to not do so would mean they are discriminating against you due to your son's disability.  You might mention you are considering going to the local press about it.

If none of this works then do ensure that you bring this up should this ever get to the point of a claim going to court.  A judge would silly to ignore this but it will be a good add on to any idiocy of the signs that don't help and the fact that payment needs to be done via an app that can't be accessed.

James_Poisson

Voyager2002 said:

Assuming that a court rules against you, you then have one month in which to pay the full amount awarded (including legal costs). It is only if some of that money remains outstanding that you have a CCJ on your record.

If you choose to dispute this, the absolute worst case is that you end up paying the full amount, plus court fees, plus the other side's legal costs, plus the cost of your own legal advice, and of course you lose the time spent preparing for the hearing and actually attending court. So long as you can settle all these costs you do not need to worry about a CCJ.

Not quite right, the "full amount" if it includes debt collection fees is not due as these would be disputable, and the "cost of your own legal advice" would would be £0

Coupon-mad

Voyager2002 said:

Assuming that a court rules against you, you then have one month in which to pay the full amount awarded (including legal costs). It is only if some of that money remains outstanding that you have a CCJ on your record.

If you choose to dispute this, the absolute worst case is that you end up paying the full amount, plus court fees, plus the other side's legal costs, plus the cost of your own legal advice, and of course you lose the time spent preparing for the hearing and actually attending court. So long as you can settle all these costs you do not need to worry about a CCJ.

This isn't true. No extra costs are risked.