UK Parking Control Limited, DCB LEGAL Court Claim - January 2026

Romeo5793 · 24 March at 6:23PM

Hi There

I am only at Stage 2 of the First Eight stages - Ignoring them.

But I wanted to start a specific thread for possible assistance with witness statement and in case they don't discontinue. I hope that is ok. So:

'Incident' occurred August 2025. Parking Charge Notices came through the post at some point thereafter claiming "NOT PARKED CORRECTLY WITHIN THE MARKINGS OF THE BAY OR SPACE" at my local XXXX Retail Park. Accompanied by a highly cropped and massively stretched photo that showed a couple of inches of a yellow line around my car, which looked like it was mostly on the line, but very hard to tell as photo so cropped and stretched. As I go there on a weekly basis and generally don't park like a ****, I assumed that the car next to me was a bit over their line and so I was a bit over on my side and all went in the bin. Irrelevent anyway as it is a large, free carpark, with masses of free spaces even on a Saturday (and it was a Monday) so no loss etc.

I submitted my AOS on MCOL 17/02/2026

I then submitted my defence on 03/03/2026 as per the usual template, with the custom part being:

3.The Particulars of Claim allege that the vehicle was not parked correctly within the markings of the bay or space. The Defendant andf amily regularly visits this retail park for shopping but has little memory of the particular day save to observe that the Defendant makes every effort to keep a reasonable distance from any car already parked in the adjoining spot so as to give occupants of both cars sufficient space to enter and exit the vehicle.The Defendant understands that the location, XXXX Retail Park, offers abundant free parking for genuine shoppers and that the alleged parking irregularity would have caused no loss, obstruction or inconvenience. The Claimant is put to strict proof that adequate signage existed, bays were clearly marked, that a contract was formed with the driver, that a prominently advertised term was breached and that they fully complied with the POFA 2012 schedule 4, which expressly states that it does not allow 'double recovery' i.e.the falsely added £70 costs which were not incurred and are, in any event,unrecoverable.

MCOL says defence received on 04/03/2026. That is currently the last update on MCOL.

At the same time, I submitted a Subject Access Request to the Data Protection Officer at DCB Legal for all letters and photos, as I was slightly curious to see how badly I had parked, or not, and thought I might need to know for witness statement etc.

I received the SAR response on the 18/03/2026 and was amused to note that, as well as including the original cropped photo from the PCN where you couldn't really see how far I was or wasn't over the line (but not massively stretched to make it look worse this time), they also included 4 other photos that show:

I was parked at the end of a line nearest to the extremely wide double driveway of the carpark, more or less in the space with the front wheel being turned out slightly over the line facing out into the driveway, impeding no one (I have to turn the wheel to put my steering lock on as it is a sketchy area, this is visible in the photos).
The one space next to me on the other side is empty and there are lots of other empty spaces visible in the carpark. I imagine that when I parked, there was a car in the one adjoining space that was too far over in their space, so I probably had to park over towards the edge of mine.
I have a large car and it is slightly sticking out of the bay at the back, but the car in the bay in front of me is parked too far back and is encroaching into my space, and you can see that on the additional photos.

This was way less poor parking than I was expecting, so redoubled my resolve to fight this blatant attempt at extorting money from me when nobody was in any way inconvenienced by me, in a free carpark, with plenty of available spaces.

I have now received an email from DCB Legal titled "Without Prejudice Save As To Costs" where they have noted that I have filed a defence and are whining that I havent included a contact number in my defence (obviously, it said optional) and they respectively ask me to provide my name, address and contact number because of something about Civil Procedure Rules 1.1 and 1.3 saying that I have to assist with the court's overriding objective by emailing or phoning them to give them my contact details. LOL. They have also said their client would also like to assist the court in it's overriding objective by maybe being prepared to make an offer to conclude the matter and that a settlement would avoid further potential costs being incurred (doesn't say by whom).

Obviously I am ignoring this.

So am now waiting for my DQ from the court. My postal service is notoriously bad - I often get hospital letters weeks after appointments etc. and I am away a lot for work. I am a bit worried it has got lost in the post. Will I know on MCOL when they have sent out a DQ? Should I still wait for one in the post or should I download one and send it off?