PCN - but no contact before bailliff action Options

[RH172]

This concerns an alleged parking ticket on 31 10 2016. My partner cannot recall a parking ticket - nor was there ever a Notice to owner or any other notice.

Nothing was received until Bailiff Letters started arriving from 11 August 2017 - a complete surprise. The letters were quite vague - headed Parking Penalty Charge - so we did not associate them with a PCN. We did not contact the Council - as we did not believe an offense had taken place and the vague nature of the letters.

We did write to the bailiff stating we had never received a parking ticket or a Notice to Owner - but they never directly acknowledged this point and weren't interested.[attachment=52777:andrew_j...pondence.pdf]

Eventually we were sent a very sloppy Warrant by the Bailiff. No court stamp and no signature. We did not take it seriously as we had had no notification of any court action or case.

When the Bailiff started to distrain we contacted the Council - and discovered it was indeed a PCN. We were advised by the Council to submit a TE7 and TE9 which we did.

On 7 Jan we received a rejection from TEC to our request to submit late evidence.

What do we do now? A N244 application?

Thank you.

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[Incandescent]

As already suggested, your biggest problem is convincing a judge that 3 pieces of mail have gone missing.

All sent out automatically from the same sender, so effectively 3 random acts within a sausage factory.

The natural conclusion is the problem exists at your end. You say you've checked your V5 is correct, and not just assumed. No shared mailbox? And no one in household that would want to hide the items of mail, not realising the issue would result in bailiffs etc.....?

This assumes the council are perfect, yet we all know they are not, and it is likely this imperfection extends to their IT systems ! They obtain name and address from the DVLA using an automated process, but we do not know how that information is transcribed into their own IT system once it is received. If it is transcribed manually, errors can occur, yet the assumption in councils seems to be that nothing can go wrong. As a person who was involved in IT for decades, I can assume all those who read this forum that mistakes in IT systems are very common. Some mistakes have had fatal or near-fatal consequences where the system is safety critical.
What needs to happen is for the council to declare what their process is following receipt of DVLA information, and what checks they make of the information recorded in their system before sending out documents, in other words there should be (must ?) be an audit trail of key information used in the process. Mail will go astray if it is incorrectly addressed, and the council cannot expect it to be returned;, many places will just throw the stuff in the bin as "junk mail".

This post has been edited by Incandescent: Thu, 11 Jan 2018 - 20:15

[Neil B]

You say you've checked your V5 is correct, and not just assumed. No shared mailbox?

+1

They obtain name and address from the DVLA using an automated process, but we do not know how that information is transcribed into their own IT system once it is received. If it is transcribed manually, errors can occur, yet the assumption in councils seems to be that nothing can go wrong. As a person who was involved in IT for decades, I can assume all those who read this forum that mistakes in IT systems are very common.
What needs to happen is for the council to declare what their process is following receipt of DVLA information, and what checks they make of the information recorded in their system before sending out documents, in other words there should be (must ?) be an audit trail of key information used in the process. Mail will go astray if it is incorrectly addressed, and the council cannot expect it to be returned;, many places will just throw the stuff in the bin as "junk mail".

+1

These are more tangible than anything OP is saying and can and should be looked into.

[DancingDad]

Has the council used the right address ?
This is not simply is your V5c correct but have they correctly addressed the notices?
For instance not transposed numbers?
You can ask council to double check and confirm and ask TEC what the address on the original warrant was to confirm.

[peterguk]

Yes guys. Agreed, there are other possibilities.

I (probably) incorrectly assumed OP's first question when he spoke with the council would have been "where did you send the notices?".

So OP needs to see copies. Can he get copies from the council by simply asking for them?

[Neil B]

I suggested getting the case log to see if anything was sent at all !

This post has been edited by Neil B: Fri, 12 Jan 2018 - 00:10

[Neil B]

Being curious as to whether you'd made any progress I've had another read through and I'm further confused.

The bailiff has clamped a motorhome for a debt of $500 odd. This was done on 22 November.

Which I now discover you claim belongs to you, not the debtor?

That's a whole different ball game.
I can't quite remember the procedure but you need or rather needed to make your claim
on that vehicle to the bailiff, in writing. Have you done so?
I seem to recall such claims are time limited.

And that reminded me of an earlier question I asked which went unanswered -

Bailiff entered 31/8, is that right?
Levied car but neither clamped nor removed that day?

It was actually 29/8/17 and, as far as I can make out, the bailiff took control of a Mercedes 250 slk,
certainly not a motorhome, giving you until 31/8/17 to pay up.
The same vehicle involved in incurring the debt.

What happened to that vehicle ?

[RH172]

Who is OP?

Thanks for more replies. Some answers:-

* I will request copies of notices Monday. Also the case log.

* the bailiff is a lier and a bully. yes they clamped my motorhome, the alleged offence being against my partner. whilst very frustrating - and easy to defeat - but all they will do is come back and clamp the SLK (they have not done so yet) - so all i do is increase the debt

*more annoying is they have committed libel - writing to me to request i do not threaten their staff with a golf club again - which is the reason they called the police. This is a bare faced lie. I checked with police call records - no mention of a golf club or violence - nor when the police arrived. these are the people who have run up 100's $$ in costs against us, and they think they can behave with impunity.

* my main concern is to get the truth out and defeat the original offence. the law states for a PCN that a NtO must be served within x days. It and other notices have never been received. yet we are stuck here with no realistic method of defending ourselves. The matter has gone to court without notice to us and we are found guilty for an offence we had no knowledge of. Where is the natural justice here?

[Neil B]

OP - original/originating poster - you.

I'm unclear on a few things.
Starting with this.

yes they clamped my motorhome, the alleged offence being against my partner. whilst very frustrating - and easy to defeat - but all they will do is come back and clamp the SLK (they have not done so yet) - so all i do is increase the debt

- I asked. Have you made a claim to the goods by writing to the bailiff?

- Was the motorhome on the property of the debtor's address?

- What are you referring to by "easy to defeat"?

- What debt is increasing?

and

these are the people who have run up 100's $$ in costs against us,

I did ask earlier: The debt at the moment is £423; why do you think more?

This post has been edited by Neil B: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 - 09:56

[Incandescent]

At the moment the original contravention is irrelevant until the matter can be reverted to Notice to Owner stage.

This whole thread hangs around non-receipt of three documents that will all have been sent to the address on the V5 as recorded at the time the NtO was to be issued. OP says V5 is correct but is that "correct" as in" same as where they are living now" ? If so, then it looks like the council have made an error of addressing, OR the mail has all gone astray somehow, but chances of all three going astray all sent at different times is very unlikely. OP is now at attendance to a Judge-in-Chambers stage for review of the Witness Statement so has to convince him/her that the documents going astray is not his fault, so must be certain of the facts re the V5 address. Bearing in mind this costs £255 it is important the full facts are presented. What address the council actually put on the envelopes would seem crucial as there could have been an error of transcription from the DVLA data.

This post has been edited by Incandescent: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 - 11:35

[hcandersen]

OP, that's you.

Can we please identify the objective evidence here which pre-dates the enforcement agent, I cannot find any documents in this thread:

At the relevant time and until now your partner was the registered keeper of a vehicle which allegedly committed a contravention subject to civil enforcement.

The V5C of the car suspected of being involved carries correct details.

None of the statutory notices was received by them.

Keeper has received a copy of a warrant with their correct details (nothing to do with the enforcement agent, this would still have been generated by the authority)

They became aware that an Order for Recovery had been issued and sought to have this revoked by submitting an out of time witness statement request which, following submission of an objection by the authority, was refused by TEC.

The keeper received the authority's objections to their request, but we've not seen this document.

TEC's letter advised the keeper that they could apply for a review of this decision and the timeframe which applies.


What we don't know
Whether the PCN was postal or normal and therefore what statutory notices should have been issued.
Whether something as simple as the authority mistransposing the DVLA details has occurred. This could have given rise to the original issue of non-receipt if the error was material, but would NOT excuse the authority from cross-checking their records on receipt of TEC's notification that an OOT had been submitted. Neither would transposition explain why a warrant was applied for with the correct address.

How could this be tested?
The OP needs to obtain confirmation of the exact address used for the notices. The authority's submission to TEC would probably not have included this, they would have used the expression 'we sent the notices to the address held by DVLA'.

OP, if the address on the notices is exactly as per the V5, then IMO your chances of success with an N244 are slim at best.

This post has been edited by hcandersen: Sun, 14 Jan 2018 - 12:44

[Neil B]

I cannot find any documents in this thread:

Post #8 and they answer several of your other questions.

[hcandersen]

I can find the authority's objection which, as I imagined, doesn't tell us what we need to know. The OP needs to see a copy of the NTO with the address. I can see that the PCN was regulation 9.

Yes, it's belt and braces, but neither we, nor the TEC officer nor the OP have seen the actual address used.

Anyone who knows the internal, silo-like, organisation of a council will know that the person who wrote the authority's objection was very, very unlikely to have been involved prior to this point and their comment would have been based on an internal memo/form which ticked the box 'were notices sent to the correct address?' And so they were no more in the know than us.

The OP says 3 notices were not received, therefore:

They are being economical with the truth and the notices were correctly addressed and delivered, or
The notices were addressed correctly but not posted, or not addressed correctly and the difference led to each of them not being delivered and not returned to the authority.

What else is possible?

Having gathered all the information then "When you have excluded the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.”

[RH172]

thanks again hcanderson, incandescent and NeilB .

I have requested the 3 notices from the Council - along with a full copy of their log. I am concerned the Council responses are slowing down - i have until Friday now to make an N244 application or not. i go away saturday for 1 week.

I also made a 'subject access request' for similar information and offered to pay their costs (£10 or whatever)

hcanaderson mentioned the warrant. We did not receive this from TEC. We had no correspondence from TEC until after the bailiff visit on 22 November, and after i phoned them (no answer) and emailed them on 23 November. The warrant was received from the bailiff after we wrote doubting that one existed. I am still concerned the warrant looks nothing like i would expect a court document to look like. No signature - no court stamp / motif - could have been run off a PC by a child.

Another aside. The TEC's decision dated 7 January was posted to us at 12 Vale Court CF**7**. So correct postcode but no town. However it did arrive. Just another example of poor transcribing, that we know happens.

This takes us back again to Natural Justice. An accused is normally entitled to be advised of what they are accused of along with the evidence against them, and then entitled to a fair hearing - and to be entitled to a copy of the decision. We had none of this, not even the decision. Nor were we even aware of the PCN and nor did we have the opportunity to pay it or dispute it.

Are the principals of natural justice relevant here?

I keep reading 'how can 3 letters go missing'. That it is beyond coincidence. Yes. However you could also say it is not a coincidence at all. No one - not the TEC, not the Council saw fit to make any contact with us at all until after they instructed bailiffs - and even then contact was initiated by me on 23rd November

Is it becoming clear that this is not the sort of thing i let lie? This kind of implies, had there been earlier correspondence that we would have responded to it. After all - that is the truth.

[stamfordman]

The letters went to someone, somewhere. Bailiffs are employed to find people when necessary, i.e. to collect a debt. There is no process or worth in councils tracking down people who haven't updated their V5C to pursue something as lowly as a parking ticket until it is registered as a debt. Not saying that's happened here - you are about to find out what has.

This post has been edited by stamfordman: Mon, 15 Jan 2018 - 19:39

[RH172]

hcanderson

I just noted the PCN was 'regulation 9'. We did not know that. Does that mean the ticket was never attached to the car? How can you tell what type of ticket it was?

If that is correct - should the ticket have been posted? It was not.

Lizzy and i have been racking our brains trying to recall whether or not she received a parking ticket in October 2016 - the first of which we knew about was in August 2017 from the bailiffs. It now appears she did not receive a parking ticket as such?

[DancingDad]

REgulation 9 PCN is the standard PCN, served by fixing to the vehicle or handing to person appearing to be the driver.

[hcandersen]

Regulation 9 is the regulation under which these PCNs are served. The PCN does not have to be on the vehicle when the driver returns (so pl don't think of this as a defence), the authority would have photos of service. Third parties have been known to remove them for fun, others because they then keep in their glove compartment and put on their own car if parked where it shouldn't so as to deter a CEO from serving another etc.

Can't wait to see the addresses. You could always just phone the authority and ask!

[RH172]

I have spoken to the Council.

They tell me The NtO wsa issued 2/12/2016 to the correct po/s/tal address. the charge certificate was snet 3/01/2017 to the correct postal .address and the TE3 was sent to the correct postal address. They have emailed 2 of these documents and photos of the car with the PCN attached.

This is the first time we have seen any of this. This is not what i was expecting and am now at a loss what to do. I am trying to speak to a supervisor at the Council but somehow doubt i will get anywhere.

[DancingDad]

Just to clarify, when you say correct postal address, that is your address and is printed correctly n the notices you have got copies of?
And 100% correctly, house number, street spelling, post code ?



This post has been edited by DancingDad: Tue, 16 Jan 2018 - 15:28

[RH172]

Dancing Dad

Regrettably - the addressee , the postal address and the post code are all correct on the two letters i have seen.