hi forum, we live on an estate with several lock-up garages, over the past years many have been left abandoned with broken locks and doors. In the past year I decided to put a SORN classic car in one of them as the locks were already broken, and in any case most of the others were being fly-tipped in, and my use of the garage in this way at least prevented fly tippers. Recently the council management organisation ordered a clearout, and they changed all the locks, however they did such a bad job of it (using obviously untrained workers who cant speak english, and scavenging parts from other broken garages instead of buying new locks) ...that they left the doors unsecured, again. I quickly removed the car without causing any damage, to their already defective 'repairs'. They alledge (through DVLA checks) I broke the lock to rescue my car (non true, I can get severall witnesses to back me up), and want to charge me 500 pounds to fix it. What really annoys me is that the estate manager used the words 'illegal use of garage 12', if it was illegal, surely it is a criminal matter, one that the police should be dealing with, not estate management. I would like to threaten to take the estate organisation to court for a litany of botched repairs, attempted extortion, use of illegal workers etc. What case law can i find to back me up? thanks bert.

Hi thanks for the feedback, I read the heavyweight article on ignoring it vs the set aside, and reason that it would take a good few days of trawling through the paperwork to get at least 3 concrete reasons to convince a judge for a SA. In any case I only picked up the SD a few days ago, so if it did go forward I would have at least have a witness to say I picked it up weeks after it was delivered. Re: the call, I asked to speak to the person named on the SD but i did not say why and did not leave a message or reference number, but gave my name, aware that the call was being recorded I mentioned nothing of a SD, just asked to speak to him. If they use the call to prove i was served should I call another 2 times to bolster the setaside approach if i've already "let the cat out of the bag"?

definitely post, A4 window envelope 1st class , pobox in bristol as return to sender address, and a sort of elongated barcode on envelope. but no one in my old flat bothers to do RTS, which is sort of handy as i havent bothered with a redirect.

hi forum, i recieved an SD notice dated from CapQ at the end of december, the debt was bought by them from barclaycard (about 7k) 6 months before. Notice of assignment was sent to my old address, as was the SD, and I have only just recieved it. . I was unable to pay their myriad of collection agencies (DML, Russel aitken, HL legal, nelson guest, wescott etc for very long, each with their own barrage of threatening letters and calls. These particular letters were sent to my current address/last known to them address where i am still at now, so I've no idea why barclay/cq have used my old one for a SD and notice of assignment, unless they intend for me to miss their post and press ahead with their petition. The last payment to agents of barclaycard was 3 years ago. Anyhows the 18 days from the date on the SD letter was today, and am a bit worried of what to do at court tomorrow for the affidevit, I tried to call barry davies but would not be put through to him of the error of the correspondence address, I made the operator know that I tried to call him and he logged the call. Also since i stopped paying, all the letters mention sums owed within a range of 400 pounds (i.e. 6994.34, 6706.34 etc etc) even the sums with capq mentioned in the letters (on behalf of etc) vary slightly both up and down, i assume Also should I cca capq straight away? I cant imagine that they would have bought the debt without the original cca (it would be about 10 years old by now) or am i wrong?? Any advice on what to do next, time really seems a bit tight, I am aware that 1st class post can take 3 days so by their method of delivery could have arrived at my old address around 3rd january, which may give me a few more days if the judge sees fit that I was served. thanks bert.