Witness Statement

Nylamummy · 9 September at 12:53PM

Hello, I was wondering if someone would kindly read my witness statement and let me know if any amendments are suggested? I have two NCP parking tickets for the same overnight stay, which they are taking me to court for…..

I, xxxxxxxxxxxxx, am the defendant in these proceedings. I make this witness statement from matters within my knowledge, except where otherwise stated. Where I refer to documents, I intend to rely upon those documents as exhibits to this witness statement.

Background and my use of NCP Autopay

1. I parked my vehicle, registration xxxxxx, at the claimants xxxxxxxx Car Park between the 24th September 2025 and 25th September 2025. The parking gave rise to PCN xxxxxx and PCN xxxxxxxxx.

2. I was a registered user of the NCP App and had previously used its AutoPay feature. My understanding and experience of AutoPay was that the appropriate parking charge would be automatically debited from my registered payment card when I exited an NCP car park.

3. I had successfully used AutoPay before. In particular, I have records of AutoPay payments of £5.90 at Manchester Palace on 12 June 2023 and £13.80 at Manchester Spinningfields on 24 October 2023. I will rely on those receipts as evidence of my previous use of, and reliance upon, the service.

4. I understand that NCP now says that AutoPay was discontinued in or around October 2023. I was not aware of that at the time I parked at xxxxxxxx

5. I did not receive, or at least I have been unable to locate, any email from NCP telling me that AutoPay had been discontinued. I have searched my email records for such a notification and found none.

6. I had not parked at an NCP car park between October 2023 and the parking events in September 2025. I therefore had no previous parking occasion on which I would have discovered that the service I had previously relied upon was no longer operating.

7. I did not see any signage at the entrance to, or within, the xxxxx car park warning me that AutoPay had been discontinued or that a customer who had previously relied upon AutoPay needed to take a different action in order to pay.

8. I have also taken a screenshot showing that the NCP App and/or Help Centre continued to contain AutoPay-related FAQs or guidance after the date on which NCP says the service had been discontinued. That continued reference to AutoPay reinforced my belief that the service remained part of NCP's system.

9. For those reasons, when I parked at xxxxxxxx I genuinely believed that AutoPay remained active on my account and that the parking charge would be taken automatically, as it had been on my previous uses of the service.

The Overnight Stay and the Two Parking Events

10. On the relevant dates I was staying overnight at a hotel adjacent to the car park. My intention was to park for what I regarded as one overnight/approximately 24-hour stay.

11. During that stay I briefly left the car park to obtain food and returned later the same evening. I did not appreciate that this would be treated by NCP as two separate chargeable parking events.

12. Because I believed AutoPay was operating, I expected any parking charges generated by my use of the car park, including any consequence of leaving and re-entering, to be dealt with automatically through the app and my registered payment card.

My Contact with NCP and attempts to pay

13. On 10 October 2025, I noticed that no parking payment had been taken from my account. I therefore contacted NCP's customer service department by webchat to find out what had happened and to arrange payment. I did this before I had received either PCN.

14. During that webchat I explained that I had stayed overnight near the car park, had left and re-entered during the stay, had expected AutoPay to process the payment automatically, and was contacting NCP because I was concerned that no payment had been taken.

15. During the same webchat, the NCP representative told me that two PCNs had already been issued and that the matter was 'outside the time to pay'. The representative also said that customers had been emailed about the change to AutoPay, but was unable to confirm to me the date of the alleged notification or whether any notification had been provided through the app.

16. I subsequently appealed both PCNs.

17. On 28 November 2025, NCP partially upheld my appeals by resetting the payment timescales and reducing each charge to £20.

18. On 5 December 2025, I offered to pay the ordinary parking tariff of approximately £10, which was the parking cost I had always expected and intended to pay. NCP did not accept that offer.

19. On 10 January 2026, I made a further written offer to settle both PCNs for a total of £20, expressly without admission of liability. That offer was not accepted.

20. Throughout this matter I have never sought to avoid paying the genuine parking tariff. My conduct on 10 October 2025 is particularly important to me because I contacted NCP myself, before receiving either PCN, specifically because I realised no payment had been collected and wanted to resolve it.

Why I dispute the claim
21. I dispute the Claimant's claim because I was not given clear notice that the AutoPay service on which I had previously relied had ceased to operate. I had no reason, based on my previous experience and the information available to me, to believe that I needed to use a different payment method.

22. I also did not see any clear warning at the car park that leaving and re-entering during my overnight stay would result in two separate parking events and, in my circumstances, potentially two separate parking charges.

23. Had I known that AutoPay was no longer operating, I would have paid the applicable parking tariff by another available method. My subsequent attempts to pay the tariff were consistent with what I had intended to do from the outset.

24. I respectfully ask the Court to consider the contemporaneous evidence of my previous AutoPay use, my email search, the NCP webchat, the appeal correspondence, my payment and settlement offers, and the continuing AutoPay references in NCP's own app and/or Help Centre.

25. I therefore ask the Court to dismiss the Claimant's claim. If the Court nevertheless finds that a sum is due, I respectfully ask the Court to take into account that I always intended to pay the ordinary parking tariff, acted promptly once I realised no payment had been taken, and repeatedly attempted to resolve the matter.