Which but of my signature did you miss?
This is probably already on your radar, but in researching Excel v. Wilkinson I came across this government consultation with the public that closes in two days, you might be interested: https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/private-parking-code-of-practice
Subject: Your defective pre-action response – landowner authority, £70 uplifts, and PAPDC non-compliance
Dear Sirs,
Your assertion that I have no right to inspect your client’s landowner authority is misconceived. Standing is a threshold issue. If your client lacks authority from the landholder to contract with motorists and/or to litigate in its own name, there is no cause of action. The Practice Direction – Pre-Action Conduct (PD-PAC) requires disclosure of key documents relevant to the issues in dispute before proceedings (para 6(c)). Your client’s landholder authority (or a complete chain of authority) is plainly such a document. Please provide it (commercial terms may be redacted but the parties, site plan/boundary, dates, and rights to issue charges and litigate must be visible).
For the avoidance of doubt, the sector’s Private Parking Single Code of Practice (v1.1, 17 Feb 2025) itself requires written confirmation from the landowner covering the items listed at clause 14.1(a)–(j) (identity, site boundary, byelaws, permission granted, T&Cs to be applied, method of issue, etc.). Your client says it has this; then it is a key document it relies upon and should be disclosed pre-action.
PoFA: you’ve cited the wrong Schedule and the wrong effect. You refer to “Schedule 8” of PoFA. The relevant provisions are Schedule 4, not 8. If you intend to pursue the keeper, please identify the specific paragraphs of Schedule 4 said to be satisfied for each PCN and confirm whether you rely on para 8 or para 9. Note that para 4(5) limits any keeper recovery to the amount specified in the Notice to Keeper. Any attempt to add fixed “debt recovery” sums to a keeper claim would be contrary to statute.
You rely on trade-body codes to justify an extra £70 per PCN. Even your own sector Code only says that “where a Parking Charge becomes overdue a sum of up to £70 may be added” (cl. 8.4.3). That is not law, does not bind the court, and cannot displace PoFA Sch 4 para 4(5) or the PD-PAC/CPR cost-shifting regime. Numerous County Court decisions (including the often-cited Excel v Wilkinson) have treated these add-ons as an abuse/double recovery and struck them out. My position is that no £70 uplifts are recoverable, still less three of them in one batch. If you disagree, please provide your authorities now.
For completeness, ParkingEye v Beavis did not grant a roving licence to pile on unregulated “debt recovery” fees in addition to the headline parking charge. If you intend to rely on Beavis, identify the passages you say justify your uplifts.
Your emails alternately assert a single outstanding balance of £170 and a demand of £510. If you allege three PCNs of £100 each, identify each PCN by number, date/time, location, alleged breach, and state precisely how you contend the total is calculated PCN-by-PCN. A coherent statement of case and key documents are required by PAPDC paras 5.1–5.2 within 30 days of request. You have not complied.
Documents required within 30 days (no portals)
Provide directly (by email/post), not via a login portal:a) Landowner agreement/chain of authority (as above).
b) Full signage suite and a site plan showing sign and ANPR locations at the material time.
c) Unaltered NtKs for each PCN you rely on, with the exact PoFA route stated.
d) ANPR stills and event logs for each PCN.
e) DVLA request dates/results and any soft-trace/address-verification undertaken before escalation.
f) A PCN-by-PCN breakdown to the penny showing how you reach the demanded sum.
The PAPDC requires you to provide the documents or explain unavailability within 30 days; if you provide them, you must then allow a further 30 days before issuing. Proceeding sooner will be opposed as non-compliant.
If you issue proceedings without first complying with PAPDC/PD-PAC by giving a coherent explanation and the key documents above, I will report your conduct to the SRA for apparent breaches of Principle 1 (rule of law), Principle 2 (integrity) and Principle 5 (proper standard of service).
Please confirm, within 7 days, that you will: (i) send the documents requested in §5 within 30 days; and (ii) refrain from issuing any claim until at least 30 days after you have complied, as required by PAPDC 4.2/5.2. Otherwise, any claim will be met with an immediate application to stay for non-compliance (with costs) and an application under CPR 3.4(2) to strike out any unrecoverable add-ons.
Yours faithfully,
[Name]
Subject: Your defective response dated 20 August 2025 – Failure to comply with Pre-Action Protocol
Dear Sirs,
Your response dated 20 August 2025 is noted. It fails to address the deficiencies outlined in my letter of 8 August and remains non-compliant with the Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims and the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct.
Your vague reference to an online portal is not sufficient. The Protocol requires that documents be provided directly and clearly—not buried behind login credentials or third-party platforms. You have failed to supply:• Copies of the original Notices to Keeper
• Photographic evidence of signage at the material time
• The full contractual terms allegedly breached
• Evidence of your client’s authority from the landowner
• A breakdown of the £510 claimed, including the legal basis for the £70 uplift
Your attempt to justify the £70 charge by citing trade association CoPs is legally irrelevant. These codes do not override statutory requirements or judicial precedent. The Supreme Court in ParkingEye v Beavis [2015] UKSC 67 did not endorse arbitrary uplifts, and your client’s Notices to Keeper fail to comply with Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. As the driver has not been identified, your client has no lawful basis to pursue the keeper.
Your continued failure to provide the required documents and information is obstructive and unreasonable. If proceedings are issued without full compliance, I will apply to strike out the claim under CPR 3.4(2) and seek costs under CPR 27.14(2)(g). I will also invite the court to stay the claim pending proper disclosure and will rely on Webb Resolutions Ltd v Waller Needham & Green, Daejan Investments Ltd v The Park West Club Ltd, and Charles Church Developments Ltd v Stent Foundations Ltd.
Finally, your conduct raises serious concerns under the SRA Principles, particularly Principles 1 (upholding the rule of law), 2 (acting with integrity), and 5 (providing a proper standard of service). If you persist in issuing defective Letters of Claim or proceed to litigation without remedying these failures, I will refer this matter to the Solicitors Regulation Authority.
Yours faithfully,
[Your Name]
We write in relation to the above matter.
Please log on to our online portal to see documentation requested.
Our answers to your questions are as follows:
The additional charge which has been levied on your Parking Charge of £70 is the amount set out in both the British Parking Association and International Parking Community Codes of Practice as the amount which may be added to a Parking Charge when a Parking Charge remains unpaid and when further recovery is required. Our Client is a member of the BPA & IPC which is a government approved Accredited Trade Association (ATA) for Private Parking. Our Client adheres to the ATA’s Code of Practice. The £70 does not represent the cost of recovery but is a reasonable amount in relation to the Parking Charge amount, in order to encourage early payment of the Parking Charge without the need for debt recovery. It is a fair amount set by our Client’s government-approved Accredited Trade Association Code of Practice. There are however also costs incurred by our client in relation to debt recovery services.
By entering and parking the vehicle on our client's private land, you agreed to enter into a contract with our client and to be bound by the terms and conditions of that contract. The terms and conditions were clearly displayed at the entrance and in prominent places within the car park. Due to your failure to comply with the terms and conditions, our client has issued the PCN therefore if we are instructed to issue a claim the reason would be for Unpaid parking charges/ breach of contract.
We ask that you make the full payment of £510.00 within 7 days of receipt of this email.
You can make payment in the following ways:
Contact us on 0330 822 9950 (our opening times are Monday- Friday 9:00- 17:00);
portal.moorsidelegal.co.uk - Login to our portal
https://pay.moorside.legal - Quick Pay
If you fail to respond or make payment, we may be instructed by our client to issue legal proceedings against you. This will incur further costs and fees that will be added to the outstanding balance. You may wish to seek independent legal advice.
Yours sincerely,
Moorside Legal
Dear Sirs,
Your Letter Before Claim dated 29 July 2025 contains insufficient detail of the claim and fails to provide copies of the evidence upon which your client purports to rely. It is therefore in complete contravention of the Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims, the relevant Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct, and basic standards of pre-litigation transparency.
As a firm regulated by the SRA, it is reasonable to expect that you are familiar with paragraphs 3.1(a)–(d), 5.1 and 5.2 of the Protocol, and paragraphs 6(a) and 6(c) of the Practice Direction on Pre-Action Conduct. These rules exist to facilitate informed and proportionate resolution, not as a procedural afterthought.
Your client alleges a breach of contract yet refuses to provide the contract, the terms allegedly breached, or any explanation of how the sum of £510 is calculated. The Civil Procedure Rules and associated protocols are clear: before commencing proceedings, parties should have exchanged sufficient information to understand each other’s position. This plainly includes disclosure of the key documents upon which your client relies.
I had no knowledge of these alleged charges until contacted by Trace Debt Recovery in April 2025. I have since obtained evidence from the DVLA confirming that I updated my keeper address in May 2021. Your client requested DVLA data after this date but relied on the vehicle record, not the most up-to-date information. Your client’s failure to properly serve the original notices is therefore not my fault, and I deny having received them at the time.
Moreover, the Notices to Keeper your client eventually disclosed do not comply with the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012. They fail to include the statutory wording required by Schedule 4 and are therefore incapable of creating keeper liability. As the driver has not been identified, your client has no cause of action against me.
I require your client to comply with its obligations under the Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims by providing the following:1. A copy of the original Notices to Keeper that purport to create liability
2. A copy of the contract allegedly entered into, in the form of contemporaneous photographs of the signage at the material time and location
3. The precise terms and conditions that your client alleges were breached
4. The contract or other evidence establishing your client’s authority from the landowner to operate and issue PCNs at the site
5. A full breakdown of the amount claimed, including whether the £70 “debt recovery” uplift is contractual, includes VAT, and whether the sum is claimed as consideration or damages
Until this information is provided, I am unable to respond substantively. If your client proceeds to issue a claim without first providing the required documents and information, I will invite the court to stay the proceedings and to impose sanctions for failure to comply with the Protocol. I will rely on the decisions in Webb Resolutions Ltd v Waller Needham & Green [2012] EWHC 3529 (Ch), Daejan Investments Ltd v The Park West Club Ltd [2003] EWHC 2872 (TCC), and Charles Church Developments Ltd v Stent Foundations Ltd & Peter Dann Ltd [2007] EWHC 855 (TCC).
Any claim issued now will be met with a robust defence and an application to strike it out as an abuse of process under CPR 3.4(2). I will also ask the court to consider a costs order under CPR 27.14(2)(g) due to unreasonable conduct.
If you continue to send defective Letters of Claim or proceed with litigation without rectifying the defects outlined above, I reserve the right to refer this matter to the Solicitors Regulation Authority for investigation of potential breaches of SRA Principles 1, 2 and 5.
Yours faithfully,
[Your full name]
I need to know whether the wording you have shown us in your offer to part pay is the EXACT wording you used or have you paraphrased any of it? Was that correspondence to the parking company or to the useless debt collector?
However, if there has been no instance where the Keeper has said "I did this or that"...
It is the Keepers responsibility to keep their V5C address up to date.
Right now, there is nothing more you can do except to wait and see if/when they issue a Letter of Claim (LoC).
First you need to send a Data rectification notice to the DPO of Alliance parking.
Post up the copies of the PCNs you received.
So, your chances of getting this cancelled or ignored are now much lower than they would have been if you had handled it differently from the start.
Thank you for sending the notice to keepers for these three cases.
We dispute your invoiced amount of £510, which we do not feel is proportionate, but we are willing to make a payment of £200 in full and final settlement for all three cases.
We never received the Notice to Keepers until you emailed them yesterday. This is because we were no longer resident at that address: we moved out on 23rd March 2021, and into temporary accommodation until the 14th July 2021. We left a forwarding address, but the new occupants of <address> did not forward us our post. We therefore only found out about the charges several years later. I have not yet been able to find details of the DVLA address history over that time (which presumably you used to contact us), but we do admit it is possible we did not notify the DVLA of our change of address until after you sent the notice to keepers, at least for the first two.
Several years have passed since we entered your car park so it is difficult to remember what happened, but given that we have records of paying for parking at many beaches in the area over that period of time, and we never paid at your car park, we probably did not realise we needed to pay. From the many complaints about the car park on trip advisor (https://www.tripadvisor.co.uk/Attraction_Review-g8682193-d6818777-Reviews-Trevone_Bay_Beach-Trevone_Padstow_Cornwall_England.html), it seems we are not the only ones.
However, in the interests of settling the matter we are willing to pay the original charges listed on the notice to keepers, of £60 each - as if we had paid them on receipt of the original Notice to Keepers. We feel this is a fair amount, given that we have responded promptly to your correspondence as soon as we received it.
We also acknowledge the possibility of a delay in updating the DVLA address history, which may have caused you additional costs. We offer a further £20 to cover the cost of your correspondence dated 25 April, and the recent email.
This comes to £60 x 3 + £20 = £200.
This offer should not be interpreted as an admission of liability.
Please let us know if you accept the offer within 14 days, after which time it will expire.
Yours faithfully,
Good morning,
Thankyou for your correspondence.
We are unable to reduce the PCNs at this stage.
Regards,
Customer service