Court proceedings for auto repair visit

@ Geoff1963 - haha that's a brilliant and hilarious badge of honour that even the thieves went "nah"

@Lamilad - I see what you mean but I really don't want to be confrontational about it for reasons I'd rather not list here. (Will send you a message tomorrow if I get a moment). I agree it's their fault and this has been really horrifyingly stressful, but when I left the garage tonight they said I should come back if I needed anything further up to and including coming to court with me. I agree I shouldn't let people off the hook so easily, but I would rather save any big guns as a last resort.

And honestly I feel like an idiot for not taking robust action before now so in a weird way I feel I got myself into a mess. Think I'm going to take your advice from earlier and focus my energies into the defence before thinking about the other aspects.

This has turned out to be a very costly wing mirror indeed (silently cursing the person who knocked it off my car)

Yep I thought about asking him to be a witness too but I wasn't comfortable with some of his suggestions today. Felt like having him be a witness might somehow get me out of the proverbial frying pan and into etc etc. But at least he gave me the receipt and was friendly enough about it. (Just wish he'd said "we'll take care of the ticket" at the very start and that I'd responded to PCM and told them I wasn't driving... hindsight.)

I've just clocked (haha) that the precise time is on their "pay my PCN" site - it says 17:11 on there, and from my texts / messages to friends it looks like I picked it up shortly after 19:00. The estimates in my original posts were approximated from the tiny timestamps on PCM's pictures taken from their website.

Please be aware: Lying to the court is not an option. We will never advise it, and never support it.

Absolutely understood and agreed. It's certainly not my style and thankfully I've no need or inclination to since I wasn't driving! I don't think I've said anything to advocate lying but it's good you've emphasised that for anyone who (like me, until earlier this evening) was browsing through the forum looking for advice. In my experience, lying always makes things worse which is what I was hinting at in my last post by mentioning the proverbial frying pan

Yes I did find it odd that he'd say that and wondered if he was just saying that for the sake of it... and maybe to stop me from taking action towards the business. The conversation was decidedly odd! And in answer to your question he maintains he doesn't know who was driving it at the time and wouldn't be able to prove who was. If I'm honest, I don't really want to get involved with investigating that (I think that's PCM's job if they want it), I just want this whole thing off my rather tired shoulders.

Fingers crossed it's dismissed, but feels like there's a way to get yet. Nearly finished the first draft of my defence now, phew!

Quick update - I found the original NTK and some quick observations from it:

The time stamp says 16:36 even though the summary of the incident on their "pay my pcn" site says 17:11. As I said above I don't think I even picked it up until shortly after 19:00

No mention of a yellow windscreen ticket

Date the NTK was posted was 3 days after the alleged contravention so they got hold of my details from DVLA really fast it seems. So the alleged contravention was on a Saturday around 5pm, and my the following Tuesday they'd issued the NTK.

Cites PoFA 2012

Says "this vehicle was parked in a manner whereby the driver agreed to pay a charge: 'Parked within a restricted area.'"

Also says at the bottom "PCM as agent of the landowner has the right to seek payment of this parking charge"

I'm now wondering if there could have even been a contract so to speak if the signs forbid parking on the road altogether (which they do).