No Code Website BuilderThe ParkingCon.co.uk website explains the process that has to be followed by a private parking company (PPC) before they can start legal proceedings. Unfortunately, far too many victims who have received a Parking Charge Notice (PCN) from an unregulated PPC, more often than not either just pay it or attempt to appeal it. However, if they lose their appeal and even if they go on to try a secondary appeal using the PPCs supposedly "independent" appeal service such as POPLA or the IAS and lose their appeal there, they assume that that is the end of the process and they are obliged to pay the PPC.
This is fundamentally wrong. Motorists should be better educated in the way English civil law is used. Just because in their correspondence the PPC mentions "breach of terms", "court", "CCJ" and "bailiffs", they should realise that this is used as a form of intimidation and preys on the majority of victims sparse to none knowledge of civil law and the justice system. By using this terminology, the PPC is relying on this lack of knowledge to install fear and pressure the victim into paying the alleged debt.
It all starts with the PCN that offers a "discount" if it is paid within 14 days. This discount is really a bribe to encourage the victim to part with their hard earned money without an appeal, essentially a fight. In reality, the discount should be ignored. The intention of this article will be to show how the victim doesn't have to pay a penny to the PPC.
As mentioned, once the initial appeals process has been exhausted, the final step should lead to a court claim. However, long before that stage is reached, the PPC will usually issue a couple of reminders about the victims failure to pay the alleged debt. These reminder use the language mentioned above and are meant to intimidate and pressure the victim into paying.
The advice given here and on forums such as moneysavingexpert.com is to ignore all correspondence from the PPC with their reminder and final reminder letters. After this, the PPC will usually use a Debt Recovery Agency (DRA) who will offer the PPC a no-win, no-fee service whereby they will add a fee or around £60-£70 for their service which will consist of an avalanche of increasingly threatening letters that suggest that they are able to issue a CCJ and send bailiffs around to collect their belongings and property if the now increased alleged debt is not paid.
What the vast majority of victims don't realise that these DRAs have absolutely no power to do anything. They rely on the ignorance or gullibility of the victims who have little to no understanding of civil law to panic at the mere mention of "court", "CCJ", "bailiff" etc. and to concede defeat and pay the now increased sum in order to avoid the imaginary CCJ, which would ruin their credit record, and the imaginary bailiffs knocking on their door and confiscating their personal belongings.
Again, our advice is that the victim can safely ignore all threatening letters from the PPC or the DRAs. They are powerless to do anything at this time and the letters may as well be used a lining for the bottom of a birdcage. The only correspondence they need to take not of is a "Letter of Claim" LoC or "Letter Before Claim" LBC which are both the same thing.
A DRA cannot issue an LoC as they are not a party to the contract that the PPC is alleging the victim has breached which has given rise to the alleged debt. Often though, some DRAs issue letters that "appear" to be an LoC but are just another tactic they use in their intimidation.
So, the article needs to explain the actual process that would need to be followed and what happens if, eventually, an actual LoC arrives. An actual LoC must follow the guidelines of the Pre Action Protocol, a copy of which can be found here: https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/pdf/protocols/debt-pap.pdf
As explained in another article about the four steps (Plans) that the victim of a PCN should take, Plan A: complain to the landowner, Plan B: appeal to the PPC, Plan C: appeal to the PPCs IAS and Plan D: where this article comes in, these are the steps that have to be followed by the PPC if they want to go all the way to court in an attempt to recover their alleged debt.
Once the PPC has decided that the victim has not responded to the correspondence regarding the reminders and the threats from the DRA, they must now decide how they proceed. Some PPCs give up at this stage and write off the alleged debt because they know that pursuing it through the courts is often a futile task and they are better off chasing more gullible victims.
Some PPCs are more aggressive in their tactics and will decide that they want their alleged debt at any cost (almost). They will either issue the claim themselves through the Money Claims On Line (MCOL) service which is a part of the County Court Business Centre (CCBC) or they will instruct one of several solicitors firms who specialise in issuing clams for PPC clients in an automated manner to do it via the MCOL website for them. They are known as "robo-claims" specialists and are considered by most people who are familiar with their methods to be the "bottom-dwellers" of the legal industry.
Either way, the PPC must issue a claim for the alleged debt, either directly themselves or through the robo-claim solicitor. As the claim is invariably for a relatively small amount, they use the MCOL service and the CCBC then send s a claim form to the defendant. Again, at this stage, many victims will have stayed strong and ignore all the threats from the PPC and the DRAs. However, when they see that they are now actually going to be a litigant in an actual court claim, they capitulate and pay up the now, even higher amount, usually because they mistakenly think that they have a CCJ and their credit record will be trashed if they don't pay it or lose the case. Of course this is not so but the ignorance of the civil court system and terminology just sends them into a panic.
Let's review how the alleged debt has increased since the PCN was first issued. In most cases, the original charge was £100, discounted to £60 if paid within 14 days. If it was appealed, the discount (bribe) was withdrawn and it was now the full £100. Once the debt was passed to a DRA, a further £70 was added even though the PPC didn't pay the DRA that amount. If it ad been paid at that stage thanks to the DRA scaring the victim into paying, the extra £70 or a chunk of it would have gone to the DRA as their "win" fee.
So, even before it has gone anywhere near a court, the original charge has now risen to £170. As soon as the court claim is issued, they have now added interest and fixed fees such as the £35 hearing fee and the £50 solicitors costs. So, the alleged debt is now around £255. For many victims this scary stuff. However, they should know that what the claimant has put in the claim has to be justified and as it is a "small claims" claim and any added amounts above and beyond the original charge such as "damages" or debt recovery fees are not allowed. Only the two fixed fees of the hearing fee (£35) and the solicitors fee (£50) are allowed.
The reason that the claimant still adds these additional amounts is if the victim screws up by not responding to the claim, they will get a default judgment where the amounts are not questioned. Unfortunately, far too many of these robots-claims result in default judgments, more often than not because the victim forgot to update their V5C logbook when they moved from a previous address. When issuing the PCN, the PPC applied to the DVLA for the registered keepers (RK) details under the "Keeper At Date OF Event" (KADOE) rules where all correspondence goes to an old address and the claimant has no idea about the claim, can't defend it and then receives a default CCJ which they only find out about the next time they apply for any credit such a new mobile phone contract, mortgage or car loan application or a check of their credit file.
If the victim does discover a default CCJ they previously had no idea about, there are options to have it "set aside" but that is for another article to follow. Whilst none of this is particularly difficult, it can be time consuming and takes effort, usually at a time of increased stress because of the situation we are now discussing.
So, we are at the stage where a claim form from the County Court Business Centre (CCBC) has arrived. What happens next?
The advice given here and on forums such as moneysavingexpert.com is to ignore all correspondence from the PPC with their reminder and final reminder letters. After this, the PPC will usually use a Debt Recovery Agency (DRA) who will offer the PPC a no-win, no-fee service whereby they will add a fee or around £60-£70 for their service which will consist of an avalanche of increasingly threatening letters that suggest that they are able to issue a CCJ and send bailiffs around to collect their belongings and property if the now increased alleged debt is not paid.
What the vast majority of victims don't realise that these DRAs have absolutely no power to do anything. They rely on the ignorance or gullibility of the victims who have little to no understanding of civil law to panic at the mere mention of "court", "CCJ", "bailiff" etc. and to concede defeat and pay the now increased sum in order to avoid the imaginary CCJ, which would ruin their credit record, and the imaginary bailiffs knocking on their door and confiscating their personal belongings.
Again, our advice is that the victim can safely ignore all threatening letters from the PPC or the DRAs. They are powerless to do anything at this time and the letters may as well be used a lining for the bottom of a birdcage. The only correspondence they need to take note of is a "Letter of Claim" (LoC) or "Letter Before Claim" (LBC) which are both the same thing.
A DRA cannot issue an LoC as they are not a party to the contract that the PPC is alleging the victim has breached which has given rise to the alleged debt. Often though, DRAs issue letters that "appear" to be an LoC but are just another tactic they use in their intimidation.
So, what happens if, eventually, an actual LoC arrives? An actual LoC must follow the guidelines of the Pre Action Protocol, a copy of which can be found here: https://www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/pdf/protocols/debt-pap.pdf
As explained in another article about the four steps (Plans) that the victim of a PCN should take, Plan A: complain to the landowner, Plan B: appeal to the PPC, Plan C: appeal to the PPCs IAS and Plan D: where this article comes in, these are the steps that have to be followed. If the PPC wants to go all the way to court in an attempt to recover their alleged debt, they will be doing what is described after Plan C up to this Plan D.
Once the PPC has decided that the victim has not responded to the correspondence regarding the reminders and the threats from the DRA, they must now decide how they proceed. Some PPCs give up at this stage and write off the alleged debt because they know that pursuing it through the courts is often a futile task and they are better off chasing more gullible victims.
Some PPCs are more aggressive in their tactics and will decide that they want their alleged debt at any cost (almost). They will either issue the claim themselves through the Money Claims On Line (MCOL) service which is a part of the County Court Business Centre (CCBC) or they will instruct one of several solicitors firms who specialise in issuing clams for PPC clients in an automated manner to do it for them. They are known as "robots-claims" specialists and are considered by most people who are familiar with their methods to be the "bottom-dwellers" of the legal industry.
Either way, the PPC must issue a claim for the alleged debt, either directly themselves or through their robot-claim solicitor. As the claim is invariably for a relatively small amount, they use the MCOL service and the CCBC then sends a claim form to the defendant. Again, at this stage, many victims will have stayed strong and ignore all the threats from the PPC and the DRAs. However, when they see that they are now actually going to be a litigant in an actual court claim, they capitulate and pay up the now, even higher amount, usually because they mistakenly think that they have a CCJ and their credit record will be trashed if they don't pay it or lose the case. Of course this is not so but ignorance of the civil court system and terminology just sends them into a panic.
Let's review how the alleged debt has increased since the PCN was first issued. In most cases, the original charge was £100, discounted to £60 if paid within 14 days. If it was appealed, the discount (bribe) was withdrawn and it was now the full £100. Once the debt was passed to a DRA, a further £70 was added even though the PPC didn't pay the DRA that amount. If it ad been paid at that stage thanks to the DRA scaring the victim into paying, the extra £70 or a chunk of it would have gone to the DRA as their "win" fee.
So, we are at the stage where a claim form has arrived. The claim form is known as an N1 form. It is very important that any claim is acknowledged. This is called the Acknowledgement of Service (AoS). Failing to AoS could lead to the claimant getting a default CCJ against you.
The AoS is done online on the MCOL website. You have up to 14 days from service of the claim to AoS. The 14 days start from the "Issue Date" on the N1 claim form. Don't AoS before the fifth day after the Issue Date but there is no further advantage to delaying any day after that and it must be completed before the 19th day. By doing the AoS within these dates, the defendant now has another 14 days after the 19th day, or more if that day falls on a weekend or a bank holiday, to submit their Defence to the Particulars of Claim (PoC) as stated on the N1 claim form.
Again, a Defence should be submitted otherwise the claimant can apply for a default judgment. The Defence should be a short, punchy outline of the legal arguments you intend to rely on in your Witness Statement" (WS) should the case actually progress all the way to court. Often, claimants submit a whole story about their case and fail to realise that most of what they have said should come later in their WS. No evidence goes with the Defence.
This is where the template defences we provide come in useful. They may be long but most defendants only have to change one or two paragraphs near the beginning as the rest covers the usually sparse PoC that the claimant has attempted to cram into the very limited PoC box on the MCOL website. They have to try and fit everything into a box that can only contain 1,080 characters (not words) which includes all spaces and punctuation marks. These robots-claim solicitors use their own templates to do this.
When submitting the Defence, you should NOT use the MCOL defence block. That too has the same character limit as the PoC box. The defence should be prepared and saved as a PDF file that you will attach to an email which is sent to the CCBC email address for submission of documents. It is ccbcaq@justice.gov.uk. Don't even put a full stop in the defence box on the MCOL website as that will considered your Defence and you can't change once you've submitted it.
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