This morning I received a County Court summons applied for by Parking Eye in respect of overstaying my welcome at a local car park.
That's fine, I was sort of expecting it one day.
However, I shall be fighting this and entering a good solid defence on the form to send back to the court. The company I work for want to pay this for me but I don't see why PE should be allowed to get away with striping them for £135 !
My question for any legal bods out there is this....can I apply to the court to have the case heard in my local court ? The issuing court is Northampton. I fought (and won) a case over twenty years ago against an advertising agency that was trying to rip me off and I recall having the case transferred to Manchester from Preston.
There's nothing in the court papers about this procedure.
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Best of luck.
I take it your defence is based on
Unfair Contract terms - i.e. Their loss is measured in pennies or a £ or 2 at most. Their claim for £135 nowhere represents "their loss"
Once again, good luck.
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See here
www.parking-prankster.com/court-claim.html
One guide is free the other costs the same as a cup of coffee
Also if you go through the Pranksters blog you will see that PE are currently losing court cases hand over fist.
There is also a pile of recent court transcripts on his site, I think the fastest recent dismissal of a PE case by a judge was around 5 minutes from sitting to standing up.
(The allocation of a court only happens once you decide to submit a defence and return the initial docs saying you intend to defend, go to the Pepipoo Private Parking Forum if you want some step by step help or just to read up on the process.)
As always
Mark
Last edited by: Mark on Thu 10 Apr 14 at 23:08
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I know all the ins and outs of the private parking rigmarole. There are a couple of car parks round here where people have had tickets for just driving through. Another area where they've issued tickets is where residents of the flats above the shops on the main road have to access their parking at the back which involves driving towards the camera, but turning right before entering the car park. The camera snaps them...there's no windsceen ticket to tie the photo up with and...voila...PCN issued ! I've actually helped a few when I've been able to contact them.
It was just the transfer of case to a local court that I'm not sure about or how to arrange it.
My main defence is that 'my' company has a space on this car park which is authorised by the owners, Manchester City Council, for us to keep a vehicle on 24/7 I parked my service vehicle there while I took the regular car for a service. My logo stickers are clear on the scamera picture. PE are also not supposed to apply to the DVLA until 28 days from the ' offence ' have elapsed. I got my first notice in about 10 days.
They ignored my initial appeal.
There was a good 2 page article in the Financial Mail on Sunday a couple of weeks ago which I've kept
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Googling Parking Eye will help with your case. They are contracted to a number of Welsh authorities and have featured on two consumer programmes here....
The Co-Op store in Tywyn have them monitoring their car-park. A fact that would have rather surprised me a few years ago....
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The Mail article was not bad but did have some errors in it; but saying that it was one of the better post PoFA articles that has appeared.
The arrival of PoFA in Oct 2012 did change the private parking game a fair bit hence why PE now issue 1000 court claims a month.
The Mail actually signposted people towards the Prankster and Pepipoo for additional help.
parking-prankster.blogspot.co.uk/2014_03_01_archive.html
The Prankster is part of a group of FOC lay reps who help in fighting PE in court cases. Their record is becoming formidable.
www.parking-prankster.com/court-cases-2014.html
As always
Mark
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The sheer audacity of such companies is perfectly illustrated by this story from a couple of days ago:
tinyurl.com/ogrkove
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Ted,
Northampton is the location of the bulk issue centre or England and Wales. Pretty much all big company debt cases will start there.
In the not too distant past transfer to defendant's home court was pretty much automatic if case was defended on the fairness limb of the rule below, or rather its equivalent in the old (Green book) County Court Rules. I don't know though if that is still the case.
The relevant bit of the current procedure rules are here:
www.justice.gov.uk/courts/procedure-rules/civil/rules/part30
30.3 deals with criteria for transfer and 30.3(2)(b) looks like it might help you.
The staff at Northampton will get this question on a daily basis and my suggestion would be to ring them and seek guidance on procedure. They cannot tell you for certain what will happen if you apply for transfer but if questioned in an open way they should be able to give you a reasonable idea.
Last edited by: Bromptonaut on Fri 11 Apr 14 at 00:16
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Thanks all for answers.. Away for the weekend 'til Monday so won't be able to read or respond to anyone 'til then.
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Northampton is just the processing centre...it can be transferred to your local Court.
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Just looked again and it wasn't a summons...just a claim form. OK. Roughed out a few points for defence yesterday .
Today I thought I'd have a trip back to the car park and look at the signage for more possible ammo. There are no signs on entry. It's not a large car park. All to the left is spaces then a low fence and flower beds. Any signs there are low and hidden by parked cars. Then, you go round to the right on a one way system in front of the Council building. The 4 signs there were on posts about 9' off the ground and not easy to see as when you get close enough to read them, the car roof is in the way. If you're looking for something, in my case ....our car, then you won't be looking up anyway.
All academic now....while I was sat in my car the phone rang. It was my service manager to apologise for not paying the original £40 and telling me they'd now phoned PE and paid the £135 by company credit card........bums! bums!
PE has effed it's own customers up now. The council asked us to put a car there as many of it's staff cycled in or used public transport but needed a sort of ' pool car ' during office hours. My office now tell me that we've had PCNs before which they have settled ( wrongly, IMO ). The car can stand there for days if it's not used or over a weekend. PE's 2 hour limit doesn't really cover these occasions !
Our car will now be removed and used somewhere else....Nice one PE !
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County Court. - Falkirk Bairn
