Free Traffic Legal Advice

OP, can we leave 'costs' to one side pl and get back to notices.

You say:
Postal PCN not received;
Charge Cert received;
Council's response to your late reps(you omitted these from you account but the council's objection shows they were made) not received;
OfR not received;
Council's objection received;
TEC's refusal letter received.

Shouts a problem with your address, not Royal Mail. They might deliver late, but 2 notices and a letter sent first-class??

Get out your V5C and check this address against postcode finder(https://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode). Is your V5C address the same in all particulars as listed on the RM site and is the V5C address the same in all respects as those on the CC AND is the address used on the council's objection - which you received- the same as the CC AND is the address you wrote on your OOT the same as the V5C?

Actually it's 2 notices missing. the 3rd one, council's response to late representation was received. I didn't post it here since I think it is irrelevant, but I've marked in the picture with red font that it was received.

The address on V5C is always correct, otherwise I won't get the charge certificate or anything else. The last 2 notices, council's objection and TEC's refusal came to the new address I am living now. The moving was after the order for recovery date, I updated V5C records on time and so far I haven't have any post issues here.

I can't explain why royal mail first class is not reliable, the fact I know is that all post services around the apartment I lived are awful.
- The first day I moved in, there was a notice on the bulletin board from estate management: "check your mailbox regularly or you risk having them picked, especially those containing bank cards"
- When I returned home I often found mail with envelope sticking out of the mailbox so anyone can take them easily.
- In the facebook group we constantly see people shouting "where is my parcel?", "whose parcel is this?". I've personally forwarded a parcel delivered to my address while it should be others.
- I once subscribed to a magazine, 2 out of 12 issues were missing.

Around last September when the PCN was served I checked up my mailbox every several days. But by the time the order for recovery was issued, that's January, I did check my mailbox daily because I was expecting the order for recovery to arrive. But no, it was not there.

OP, can we leave 'costs' to one side pl and get back to notices.

You say:
Postal PCN not received;
Charge Cert received;
Council's response to your late reps(you omitted these from you account but the council's objection shows they were made) not received;
OfR not received;
Council's objection received;
TEC's refusal letter received.

Shouts a problem with your address, not Royal Mail. They might deliver late, but 2 notices and a letter sent first-class??

Get out your V5C and check this address against postcode finder(https://www.royalmail.com/find-a-postcode). Is your V5C address the same in all particulars as listed on the RM site and is the V5C address the same in all respects as those on the CC AND is the address used on the council's objection - which you received- the same as the CC AND is the address you wrote on your OOT the same as the V5C?

Actually it's 2 notices missing. the 3rd one, council's response to late representation was received. I didn't post it here since I think it is irrelevant,

Doesn't help when info is withheld from a timeline.

My previous post asked you to compare your V5C with postcode finder because this is RM's database and represents the 'correct' version of addresses. DVLA don't cross-check, they simply record what's submitted. If, perhaps out of custom and practice, an occupier chooses to use a form of address which does not correspond to the finder database then that's their choice and risk. So..

..would you pl confirm that your V5C address is exactly as found in the finder database and that the CC was addressed to your first V5C address.

You've confirmed that your V5C address is 'always up to date'. However, experience suggests that this can take on different meanings.*

As regards other aspects of process which are implied by your account, the authority are required to use the DVLA RK address in all notices unless you notify them formally to the contrary. However, correspondence does not follow this rule. So, their objection to your OOT would be sent to the address you used in the OOT, similarly with other simple correspondence. 

*- I had a case recently where the address used by an authority was not as per DVLA. The authority made simple mistakes in that they mis-formatted the address so that it took up an additional line in the address block and this meant that when entered on to the PCN the post code was missing. However, the CC had more room and was delivered, but the OfR didn't and wasn't.

In this process there is no substitute for physically checking. 

The problem is that can I send the N244 to TEC by email and pay online (this way I can do it on 24th), or I have to do this by royal mail? If it has to been done by royal mail then I have to leave more room for the time of delivery? Does anybody have any experience with it?

To file an N244 you would need to phone TEC and it is not advisable to do that on a Monday.
The agent will transfer you to ccbc fees who will take your payment and it is ccbc fees that you then send your N244 to, following their instructions.

We are still seeing significant delays in processing at TEC but I don't know if that affects N244s.

Your hearing will be transferred to your local county court, which is where incidentally?

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Pay attention to what HCA is saying for the moment.

Personally I have concerns about your case. You've now further explained the problems with mail but I can't comprehend why none of that appeared on your OOT application?

hi @Neil B, then if want to go with the hearing I should phone TEC maybe this Friday? The local county should be Cambridge County Court.

Your deadline is later than you think and you should liaise with cp 8759 on next moves.
I wouldn't phone TEC on a Friday either personally. Everyone wants to resolve things before the weekend and then on Monday they get all those hit by bailiffs over the weekend.
It's difficult to comprehend the enormity of TEC operations.

hi @H C Andersen, no I haven't asked for copies of the missing notices. I am not aware of how to do it, the TEC and CCC is slow in response and I don't know how it will help?

For the SAR, does it stand for Suspicious Activity Report? Whatever it is I've never submitted anything except to TEC and CCC. In my experiences here unreliable post services seem to be the norm so I never knew I can do something about it. Perhaps someone else or the estate management has submitted one, I am not sure. If you think that will help I can try ask.

Just going back to notices. OP have you asked for copies of the missing notices or, if not freely forthcoming, submitted a SAR?

The council.

But phone and ask first, only SAR if they won't play ball.

A quick update: I paid £303 to request a review with hearing and retrieved the £303 back.

The process didn't go exactly as @cp8759 and I had expected. Actually the judge didn't issue an immediate cost order, but left a note in the court order allowing me to recover the cost after the proceeding has completed. In the mean while I found an administration error during county council's processing and filed an complaint. The county council agreed to comply with the court order and they also cancelled my original PCN as an added benefit.

On the hearing there were only me and the judge. The county council was absent although they have a legal representative covers the county court. The judge refused my request to issue a cost order. She gave several reasons:
1. There is no precedence that a cost order has been issued in the N244 review.
2. Section 75 of the CPR rules appears to be an separate and independent section, so the general rules of the unsuccessful party to pay the cost does not apply here.
3. N244 review is only part of the proceeding, not the whole proceeding, the unsuccessful party could only be decided after the whole proceeding has completed. The judge appeared to consider the whole PCN process as the whole proceeding.

It appeared to me that the judge had made her research for my case before the hearing. She strongly believed that she didn't have the legal authority to issue a cost order at that time, which she repeated multiple times.

However, the judge was empathetic of my situation, she agreed to leave the following in the court order:

3. The Applicant sought costs of the application against the Claimant. The Court allows the recovery of the court fee only being £303 to be paid by the Claimant at the conclusion of the proceedings.
(The judge mentioned that even if she was able to issue a cost order, she would never allow the cost of Mckenzie friend.)

Actually I am not sure whether the county council is obliged to comply with this order, because this is not a direct cost order. However, I have found another administration error during the county council's processing of my case, so I decided to try the county council's internal complaint process. It turned out that the complaint process worked fine. The county council processed the complaint and agreed to pay me back the £303 and also cancelled the PCN which was totally out of my expectation.

I hope this experience would be helpful for those in similar situations. Thanks a lot for @cp8759's help. The cost argument was well written, even though it didn't fully convince the judge. I actually believe @cp8759's argument is right, that a cost order should be issued in this case, because:
1. General rule is general rule, without explicit declaration it should apply.
2. TEC issued a court order for rejection of the TEC, the review is for this court order only, this is the whole case.

However the reality is that most judges share the same opinion (I vaguely recall that someone has said this before), so to get an immediate cost order we need to adjust the cost argument to make the judge to abandon their existing belief, to be the first one to issue a cost order in such case, which wouldn't be an easy task.

Thanks for everyone that has replied in this post!