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Advice on upcoming court case please
shuffleman1
post Tue, 4 Aug 2020 - 15:09
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Hello all


I have a court case (small claims) coming up in a few weeks and have to submit my defence(i have 6 days) to the court and claimants solicitors. i just wanted to ask peoples advice on the best way to proceed.

last year the driver visited a bowling club and parked as normal,they spent just over 30 minutes in the bar area having a drink and left. 10 days later i got a letter demanding £100 (£60 if paid within a certain time). i was gobsmacked, they used this venue for years and to be totally honest they BOTH never saw signs or banners saying that this. i'm not saying they were NOT there but simply saying that they've been there loads of times and and just drove in not paying too much attention. i will say this was always a free car park and still is, what they failed to do was validate the registration number at the reception, obviously common sense dictates that they would have done so ifthey were aware of this. i have since found out that all this was recently installed before this particular visit. My friend then went onto a site on facebook and took advice off someone on there to just ignore it saying a lot of times they will give up and also drafted a defence for me to send to their solicitors and the Northampton court, i sent that back but they immediately E-mailed saying they were continuing with a small claims. he told my friend to tell me to say no to any mediation as it would be pointless as they would still want all the money. He has now not been online in almost 3 months and my friend can not get any more advice or help from him so here i am wondering what the best course of action is.they do not know the driver and i have not admitted who it was during this as i was advised not to. i appreciate that this is a long way down the line now but any suggestions or ideas from anyone would be greatly appreciated.

I will also apologise if this seems vague, i have not mentioned the car parking company or their solicitors because i do not know who is reading this and did not want to say anything that could make it obvious and i end up incriminating anyone.i will admit to being totally useless with computers but know how to upload their claim and my defence that i was told to go with, but would not have a clue where to start with how to block things out and what of the less obvious things would need blocking??. it is a mess!!. can anyone help?

This post has been edited by shuffleman1: Tue, 4 Aug 2020 - 18:10
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post Tue, 4 Aug 2020 - 15:09
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shuffleman1
post Thu, 6 Aug 2020 - 08:48
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QUOTE (Lynnzer @ Thu, 6 Aug 2020 - 09:05) *
From the PM I had.
Signs are going to be critical here.
First off the contract for management of the site was signed on 12th April 2019. The PCN was dated 26th May.
Seems like they had around 6 weerks to get the ANPR cameras and signage placed. We know they did the ANPR as the pictures are clear on that.
However they don't have consent for them. It's a legal requirement.

Next the site has 2 entry and exit points. There is only a single sign shown as being placed on the left entry point. Since it's a requirement of their own Code of Practice to show an Entry Sign at each entry point they have failed to do that. The sign is showing on their site map, however it doesn't say that it was inward facing, outward facing, facing the building or anything. The fact that it's there is no evidence of it being placed prominently. Nor is there any dimensions shown on the site sign placement map. It could be the size of a tea plate.

Next, the T&C signs. These are all placed along the boundary. The centre strip has none and if someone was to access the site from the entry point with no Entry sign then turn immediately left onto a bay in the centre they would see no signs at all. Apart from that those signs are incredibly small and in colours that do not present themselves as being important. They are supposed to be in contrasting colours as per the IPC Code of Practice. They arfe in lime green with white lettering and text that is way too small to bring notice to the eye of a motorist unless he stood within 2 metres of them. My own HX case will plea exactly that as part of the defence. The best thing you can do here is to print out an exact scale of the sign which is 59.5cm high and with text of only 1cm height. The amount of the Parking Charge is not clearly brought to the attention of a motorist.

I am going to take an exact sized copy of that sign to my hearing, if they don't decide to pay me £350 instead.

Now, although the site shows the signs, there's no guarantee they were all there at the time of the contravention. They certainly weren't in my own case.
Of course you won't be able to visit the site now and take photos but without proof that they had been erected they are nothing more than pretty pictures. The problem is that in the format they are presented to court they all look pretty good. However it must be brought out that the T&C signs are in fact so small as to be almost invisible. The IPC Code of Practice says that operations on a new site MUST have signs warning people of the new parking arrangements. The site map shows no signs for that.

Those are just a few observations from your PM and I'm sure there'll be many more that others will pick up on. I'm short of time today so why not add the pdf of the bundle onto the posts so everyone can see it. HX already know what's in the bundle so you aren't giving anything away to them.
If you don't know how to upload just give me the nod and I'll do it for you.


Thanks for the help. i have made a vain attempt on google to try and locate any pictures of the car park with signs but found nothing. i am 95% certain that the entrance sign was on the left hand side facing inwards. there was nothing visible before enter the car park looking straight ahead.
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Lynnzer
post Thu, 6 Aug 2020 - 10:07
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Car park is here.
If the entry sign is facing across the car park rather than facing the point of entry it wouldn't necessarily be apparent to a visitor.
I doubt if they would have pictures of the site showing it was clearly sighted.
There's also the possibility that the sign wasn't at any height to draw a driver's attention to it.
The site plan doesn't have signs for notification on the use of ANPR as required under the Code of Practice 14.3 Lack of transparency

This post has been edited by Lynnzer: Thu, 6 Aug 2020 - 12:20


--------------------
The Asda shopping trolley parking ticket enthusiast
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Lynnzer
post Fri, 7 Aug 2020 - 10:49
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QUOTE (Lynnzer @ Thu, 6 Aug 2020 - 11:07) *
Car park is here.
If the entry sign is facing across the car park rather than facing the point of entry it wouldn't necessarily be apparent to a visitor.
I doubt if they would have pictures of the site showing it was clearly sighted.
There's also the possibility that the sign wasn't at any height to draw a driver's attention to it.
The site plan doesn't have signs for notification on the use of ANPR as required under the Code of Practice 14.3 Lack of transparency

I'm just wondering about the effectiveness of a witness statement.
Unless the RK was the driver he would have no personal knowledge of any matters, save for the correspondence between both parties.
There can be no statements such as "when I visited the car park there was no entry sign apparent" etc
If he was to say "when the driver visited....." it becomes hearsay.

Perhaps the introduction of new defence points could be raised such as the unacceptable addition of £60, by stating that since the defence has been submitted new information has been brought to my attention ----- and then listing these new points.
Ideas?


--------------------
The Asda shopping trolley parking ticket enthusiast
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ostell
post Fri, 7 Aug 2020 - 11:32
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The RK visited the site to check.......
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