Hi everyone, I received parking charge notices from Parking Eye earlier in the year, followed earlier advice on this site and ignored the letters.

They have since submitted a moneyclaim online to which I submitted the standard defence on the sticky in this forum.

My moneyclaim online status shows (today) that my defence has been submitted and no other update.

However I received a couple of weeks ago a letter and supporting papers from Parking Eye addressed to me and saying "NOTICE TO PROCEED" . . . Parking Eye wishes to proceed with this county court claim . . .Please find attached the N180 form and the (the bit in bold crossed out and it continues) reply to defence in the case between ....... and Parking Eye.

There is enclosed about 5 pages of legal argument about why they are acting as the operator for the land, there is a contract in place and lots of case law about these charges not being penalties etc.

My questions are these, if anyone can advise:

1) Should there not be a notice from the bulk centre at Nottingham or is it just taking time to update the online claim?

2) Is a form N180 required in order to proceed to the next stage?

3) There is no indication of timescale for response??

4) WTF do I do now????

PLEASE HELP!

thanks

if you have not received county court papers I would assume that PE are playing silly beggars,and once again trying to fool you into paying them!

they have been doing this now to me since last October,but still no court papers yet.

when & if, BIG IF they do arrive I will cherish my day in court with them,nice judge at stafford county court does not like the little man being put on by the big companys.

someone with more knowledge will be along soon,cheers good luck

Give the court a ring and ask. Pe are talking out of their rear ends hoping you back down and pay them.

A form N180 should be sent from the Court and they would give you a time by which the form has to be returned.. to the Court.

I would suggest you telephone the court and ask :

1: What is the status of the account

2: Have they sent out Directions Questionnaires yet ?

Can you please depersonalise and scan in the paperwork they have sent you - if you follow the instructions below you should be ok.

Dx100 – Instructions on uploading pdfs

Scan the required letters/agreements/sheets

as a picture file

remove all personal info including barcodes etc. using paint

but leave all figures and dates.

Go to one of the many free online pdf converter websites

convert the image to pdf format.

or if you have PDF as an installed printer drive use that

open a new message box here

hit go advanced below the message box

hit manage attachments below that box

hit the add files button on the top right

hit select files, navigate to your file on your pc

hit upload files

NB: you can set where it goes in the post by hitting insert inline.

Then hit reply button

 

When did you submit your defence ?

Hi, thanks for your replies everyone.

The defence was submitted by email to MCOL on 12 August and shows up online. The 'Notice to proceed' from Parking Eye doesn't.

I haven't got a scanner, so I think I would have to contact Parking Eye to get an electronic version of the paperwork? If they emailed it to me I might be able to post it up here I think.

thanks again

Sweet

Check with the courts and see if PE have entered anything. They might be trying to trick you and have you discontinue your defence, if they think they can threaten you enough or make you think they have backed down.

Telephone the court on Monday as I advised in post # 4

so have you received a bunch of papers that they are claiming is their argument for the particulars of claim and if so all they have done is jumped the gun, possibly in an attempt to persuade you to roll over and cough up. If you think that it is an attempt at intimidating you then complain to the court. If you have a court allocated then write to that court, otherwise phone Northampton and ask how the complaint should be laid-what form if any etc. It doesnt make sense that they would do this on more than one occasion when there is no allocation yet so I can pnly presume that they are trying to save themselves the allocation fee and the cost of travelling to wherever the case is to be heard before they have a chance to argue their case. This present desire to sue everyone must be wearing them out logistically, if everyone defends the actions they will have to employ dozens of solicitors just to attend otherwise they lose a mass of cases by default. I hope that it does bite them on the backside.

Hi everyone, I received parking charge notices from Parking Eye earlier in the year, followed earlier advice on this site and ignored the letters.

 

They have since submitted a moneyclaim online to which I submitted the standard defence on the sticky in this forum.

 

My moneyclaim online status shows (today) that my defence has been submitted and no other update.

 

However I received a couple of weeks ago a letter and supporting papers from Parking Eye addressed to me and saying "NOTICE TO PROCEED" . . . Parking Eye wishes to proceed with this county court claim . . .Please find attached the N180 form and the (the bit in bold crossed out and it continues) reply to defence in the case between ....... and Parking Eye.

 

There is enclosed about 5 pages of legal argument about why they are acting as the operator for the land, there is a contract in place and lots of case law about these charges not being penalties etc.

 

My questions are these, if anyone can advise:

 

1) Should there not be a notice from the bulk centre at Nottingham or is it just taking time to update the online claim?

2) Is a form N180 required in order to proceed to the next stage?

3) There is no indication of timescale for response??

4) WTF do I do now????

 

PLEASE HELP!

thanks

Hi there, I am hoping you have made a spelling mistake because the Bulk Centre is Northampton not Nottingham......

As advised phone Northampton on monday morning and check the claim actually exists, then submit a initial short defence and ensure they have received it.

You will then receive through the post a allocation questionnaire which is self explanatory......

After this, the case will Automatically be transferred to your nearest county court as you are an individual.......The courts sort all this out not PE and certainly not any solicitor, you do not need to do anything....

You will then hear from your court who will write to you and give you the hearing date, and PE will have to pay a hearing fee around £60

You will then be advised to submit your evidence bundle to both the court and PE no later than 14 days prior to the hearing and PE must do likewise.....

If it transpires that PE wish to drop the claim they must do so on the correct form and pay your costs up to that point....simply writing to you is not enough

regards

Scouse, there was indeed a claim and the OP submitted a defence. What (s)he is concerned about is that PE have sent a package including a copy of a Directions questionnaire - which the OP has not received.

As these would come from the Court only, the OP is concerned that

a) They have not received their copy from the court or

b) that PE have downloaded a copy from the internet and completed it in order to panic the OP.

This reminds me of some DCA's a few years ago telling people to send their defence to the DCA and not the court and the DCA winning a default because the court never got the defence. Hmm, PE do seem to be jumping the gun. Those documents should be sent to both the court and the OP.

I (as others) suspect this is a tactic to convince you to roll over and play dead as IF they have supplied the court with these documents (MCOL is sometimes slow to update) any reasonable judge would see straight through their argument.

Is there any chance you could upload these documents where the pro's can rip it to pieces

Thanks everyone,

I did submit an initial defence and this bundle seems to be their rebuttal and intention to proceed, but as I say in the letter the bit about the N180 is crossed out and there is no such form in the bundle.

I will try to contact Parking Eye and ask that they email me the content of the bundle so that I can email it to my solicitor (upload it!). I will also contact Northampton (sorry for saying Nottingham earlier) to see what they believe the situation to be.

I suppose one of the things I am worried about is running out of time to make some reply if indeed a timescale applies???

Sweet

Contact Northampton first, they will tell you what you should be doing. As I said, it looks like PE are trying to intimidate you and if you contact them they will think it has worked and use anything you say to your detriment. If you havent received a court allocation and hearing date yet it is unlikley that instruction to PE will have been sent out, hence my belief that they are trying to intimidate you into paying up before it costs them any more money and having the case forced to go ahead and the costs that entails added to their increasing expenses.

IF there is a letter from court in the pipeline then by all means ask PE for the missing documents, do this in writing (email will do) and dont give any clue as to what you may do with it in the request as that may be used against you.

Over on MSE a retired solicitor has stated more than once that she is appalled by PE's behavior, especially from their legal department. She recommends that their in-house legal rep should be reported to the SRA. That's the sort of people you are dealing with.

Don't panic. You cannot reply to their Reply at this stage. The Reply is the last "statement of case". However you do need to make sure you understand the points made in your Defence and the points made in their Reply so that you are ready for the hearing.

As citizenB advised, the next step is direction questionnaires.

OK, so I received the 'Notification of Proposed Allocation to the Small Claims Track' yesterday (Form 149A). I will update later.

I have the reply as a pdf document but need someone to help sanitise for publication - can anyone help please I have no way of doing this.

I've tried an online converter to make it a text doc but it failed and I think there must be some encryption involved - any solutions anyone?

Hi Guys,

couldn't find a way of uploading except to type every bit of the reply, sanitise it, convert to a PDF and attach it here. Hope it works and hope enough experts on here can help - there's plenty to go at.

I've numbered each paragraph to assist with discussion.

thanks for anything you can help with, this is a horrible situation.

regards

Sweet

That letter is designed to worry you. All those 'cases' they quote are (as far as I am aware) county court cases which set NO legal precedent although PE may make reference to them in a county court case as a means of persuasion.

Once they started going on about their pre-estimate, I lost the will to live.

Erection and maintenance of the site signage, installation, monitoring and maintenance of the Automatic Number Plate Recognition systems, employment of office-based administrative staff, membership and other fees required to manage the business effectively including those paid to the BPA, DVLA and ICO, general costs including stationery, postage etc.

Most of what they put here cannot be claimed as they are running costs which they would have to pay whether or not an infringement took place.

Just to reassure you , this from a very recent POPLA loss by Parking Eye:-

Whilst the Operator has provided a statement which it submits justifies the charge as a pre-estimate of loss, I am not minded to accept this justification.

The Operator must show that the charge sought is a genuine estimate of the potential loss caused by the parking breach, in this case, the Appellant’s over stay in the car park for 25 minutes. The Operator has produced a list of costs; however, these appear to be general operational costs, and not losses caused by the Appellant’s breach.

Consequently, I must find that the Operator has failed to produce sufficient evidence to demonstrate that the parking charge is a genuine pre-estimate of loss.

This is one of many losses by PE over the same thing. I know POPLA and the actual court are different, but at least the legal minds at POPLA know the difference between costs and losses.

Oh how lovely, they spout on and even bore me with a load of examples of "What constitutes a contract"......what the crux of the matter is, is that they do not own the land (HMRC Vs VCS Ltd 2012 High Court) the charge is penal (Excel Parking Services Vs Hetherington - Jakeman Mansfield 2008) They have no legal right to issue proceedings in their own name (VCS Ltd Vs Ibbotson) and that " Under contract law the claimant should be entitled only to a sum which would put him in the same position as he would have been in if the breach of contract had not occurred."

Oh how lovely, they spout on and even bore me with a load of examples of "What constitutes a contract"......what the crux of the matter is, is that they do not own the land (HMRC Vs VCS Ltd 2012 High Court) the charge is penal (Excel Parking Services Vs Hetherington - Jakeman Mansfield 2008) They have no legal right to issue proceedings in their own name (VCS Ltd Vs Ibbotson) and that " Under contract law the claimant should be entitled only to a sum which would put him in the same position as he would have been in if the breach of contract had not occurred."

Van any one clarify whether they need a business licence to operate on the land and whether they are liable for council tax? After all if you rent from a LL, council tax is your responsibility.

Ok so can someone guide me on the directions questionnaire I have to put in by 30th September please?