Free Traffic Legal Advice
Live cases legal advice => Private parking tickets => Topic started by: efficient_nothing18 on October 26, 2024, 01:16:53 pm
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Doh! It's Scotland. There's no Keeper liability (for now) in Scotland. As the Keeper, you are under no legal obligation to identify the driver to an unregulated private parking company.
Do you reside in Scotland? As the alleged contravention took place in Scotland, if they wanted to take you to court over the alleged debt, they would have to file a claim in the Scottish courts. They will not do this as there is no money in it for them even if they were to win.
You can safely ignore anything and everything from DCBL. They are powerless debt collectors. Never ever communicate with a useless debt collector.
If/when you ever receive another PCN in Scotland, either ignore completely or simply respond as the keeper and tell them to bog off. It couldn't be simpler north of the English border.
For now, just ignore everything unless they somehow enter an alternate universe and issue a claim in the simple procedure. High unlikely as the £70 debt collection fee would still likely be disallowed or significantly reduced, as Scottish courts generally view such additional charges as disproportionate, especially for low-value claims.
The £100 PCN would remain the core claim amount. Since the claim is under £300, no additional court expenses or solicitor fees would be awarded, as per the rules of the simple procedure in Scotland. This means VARS would not be able to recover any court fees or other costs beyond the original PCN amount. It simply wouldn't be worth their while for a single PCN.
So, ignore everything unless you ever receive a court claim, which would mean you have entered an alternate universe and then come back here for advice.
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Driver got new job and arrived at service station car park at 07:31 and was unaware that car park was monitored. As a new employee of the company, the driver did not yet have car registered for exemption list at that location – the location was also a temporary training location. Left car park at 13:03.
Company policy is that employees are not required to pay for parking but enter registration the same way that customers would – as this was their first shift at company, driver was unaware of the situation.
Upon receipt of first PCN, Driver emailed parking company (VARS Tech) to appeal the PCN on the basis of employment and included detail that they were driver – not knowing that they shouldn’t have done that. Company sent follow up PCN then DCBL sent 3 separate final notices to me, the registered keeper of car (not the driver), all of which stated they were going to recommend legal action to their client.
Pictures include:
Original PCN
Final DCBL notice
Google street view images of car park and singular sign posted outside the car park
Imgur Link: https://imgur.com/a/kjzLBST
Driver does not hold copies of the emails between themselves and the PCN company. The exchange included driver’s details and company responded to say that car would have to be added to a “white list” at the location. This was not possible as driver had already moved company locations by the time the PCN was issued.