Claim form from BW Legal Options

[EL14331]

Hi all,

I have been recommended this website by someone at LeagleBeagles. I have been doing most my research over there and am quite far through the process, so apologies for the big chunk of text coming! In the following text, every letter referred to has been received twice - once for each of the tickets they are holding against me.

On the 3rd and 9th May 2016, the driver received windscreen parking charge notices from Britannia Parking. When they received the first one, they went into the building attached to the off-road car park to talk to reception. The receptionist advised them not to pay as Britannia is a private company and therefore the charges are unenforceable. They now know that they shouldn’t have listened to her, but the building is owned by their university so they believed they could trust them!

I, the keeper of the vehicle, never received a NTK in the post. I had not heard any more about it, until late December 2018. I received a letter from BW Legal chasing me for the charge (£70 for the ticket, plus an addition £60 in ‘fees’). I ignored this letter, retrospectively probably an unwise decision. I emailed the owner of the building, who advised me that their receptionist shouldn't have told the driver that as they don't own the car park; the university building next door did. I then emailed the university (where I am a student) who told me that they only own some of the spaces, so I needed to find out which one the driver was in both times (hence the SAR later in the post). At the start of January 2019, I received a Letter of Claim stating that I owed £130 (per ticket), with an estimated additional fee of roughly £90. Just before the deadline of 1st February 2019, I submitted a SAR to both Britannia Parking and BW Legal. This was because I no longer have the windscreen ticket, and I wanted to see if they try to claim they did send a NTK. I have also emailed the DVLA (waiting to hear back from them) to see when/who accessed data on me.

The only data BW Legal seem to have on me is my address at the time of the PCN, and the address I moved to in December 2016. Britannia Parking sent a follow-up email on 15th Feb 2019 asking for my PCN number(s), vehicle registration, address at the time of the PCN. I replied on 3rd March 2019 (as this is when I found the message in my ‘junk’ folder), and they have a month from that date to reply to me.

I have now been issued a Claim Form (In the County Court Business Centre), with the issue date of 26 Feb 2019. However, I am still waiting to hear back from Britannia Parking about my SAR. I have sent off an acknowledgement of service for both tickets, and said that I will be defending the whole claim. I was wondering if someone could possibly advise me on how to proceed? I have read a fair amount of threads on how to prepare a defence, but I was hoping someone with a lot more knowledge than me can take a look over my forms and tell me if there's anything I should be focusing one!

Additionally, I never submitted a POPLA appeal in time as I didn’t receive a NTK - will this affect my defence?

Thank you so much for your help, its very much appreciated!

[EL14331]

Don't refer to other small claims cases in your pleadings. If you want to raise them then do so later in submissions to the court (orally or in writing).

Is it acceptable to bring a notebook/paper into the courtroom for personal reference? I would like to write stuff like this down to make sure I remember the particulars.

I don't really understand the last sentence. What has s 69 of the CRA 2015 got to do with whether the driver saw or accepted the purported offer? The section deals with contract terms that have different meanings, not whether a sign was seen or not.

I have moved this to be a subsection of section 2, is this okay? Or is it an irrelevant point?

I don't really get your point. I doubt Beavis would have been decided the way it was if the court accepted that the signs were not seen and shouldn't reasonably have been seen. I don't see the relevance of Beavis at all to what you're saying.

Do you think it would be better to try and relate it more to my case, or remove it?

In what way?

Sorry, not made myself too clear! Does the fact that they ignored my statement about their client failing to comply with PoFA 2012 mean anything to my case? I imagine that its just a standard reply and nothing more, but I was wondering on the off-chance that it could be used in my favour in court.