Yet more bumbling incompetence from this firm of failed wannabe legals. For the fun of it, I suggest you email back with the following:
Subject: Your Ref: 10320156 – PAPDC non-compliance maintained
Dear Sirs,
Your latest reply does not engage with any of the numbered PAPDC requests nor provide the documents you intend to rely upon. It simply asserts “our position remains” and threatens proceedings. That is not compliance with the Pre-Action Protocol for Debt Claims or the Practice Direction – Pre-Action Conduct.
Your email asserts that “our position remains that you are liable”. Please clarify whether this is (a) your position as supposed solicitors, after advising on the applicable law, or (b) your client’s position. If it is the latter, please confirm that you have advised your client that keeper liability under PoFA Schedule 4 arises only upon strict compliance with all mandatory conditions, and that there is no legal presumption that a registered keeper was the driver.
As regulated solicitors and officers of the court, you are required to act with integrity, not mislead, and to comply with pre-action obligations. If—despite the points already raised—you invite proceedings on a basis that ignores PoFA or reverses the burden of proof, I will rely on this correspondence on costs as evidence of unreasonable conduct and failure to comply with the PAPDC.
For the record:
1. Liability denied. I am the registered keeper, do not identify the driver, and rely on strict PoFA compliance (which you have not shown) or, failing that, your burden to prove driver identity with evidence, not assertion.
2. Documents still missing. You have not provided: the NtK relied upon, proof of service, landowner contract conferring standing to litigate, signage plan and contemporaneous photos, VRM/permit/payment audit logs, attendant notes, and the legal basis for all sums including the unrecoverable £70 add-on.
3. Protocol breach and consequences. If you issue without curing these defects, I will seek a stay and sanctions for unreasonable conduct, and will invite the court to strike out any irrecoverable add-ons.
If you are serious about litigation, re-issue a PAPDC-compliant Letter Before Claim and the above documents. Time to respond will run from receipt of a compliant pack. Otherwise, discontinue.
Yours faithfully,
I Palmer
You can respond to that incompetent nonsense with the following:
Subject: Your Ref: 10320156 – Your “driver presumption”
Dear Sirs,
Thank you for the unintentional comic relief in this passage:
“Regarding the PCN being issued after 14 days; our basis for pursuing these is that we/the client has reasonably concluded that you were the driver… you were offered the opportunity to nominate a driver and did not… therefore we are reasonably concluding it was you.”
That paragraph manages to be wrong in law, wrong in logic, and wrong in practice—an unhappy trifecta for anyone proposing litigation.
1. PoFA is binary, not optional.
If the Notice to Keeper was posted outside the statutory time limit, the route to keeper liability is closed. Full stop. There is no discretionary override. The fallback is to prove driver identity on the balance of probabilities with evidence—not inference, not frustration, and certainly not wishful thinking. “We reasonably concluded...” is not a statutory gateway. It is a confession of evidential failure.
2. There is no s.172-style duty in private parking.
In criminal road traffic matters, Parliament created a duty to name the driver. In private civil claims, it did not. You cannot manufacture a reverse burden by inviting a keeper to “nominate” someone and then treating their refusal as proof.
Silence is not an admission. It is legally inert.
3. Your inference is circular.
Your syllogism is: you didn’t tell us the driver → therefore you were the driver. That is textbook petitio principii. The burden remains with the Claimant. If you intend to allege I was the driver, you must plead and prove it with cogent evidence (e.g. identification, witness, telematics), not with a displeased shrug and a presumption dressed up as conclusion.
4. Persuasive authority says what you deny.
County Court decisions have rejected precisely this “keeper = driver because they didn’t say otherwise” gambit. See VCS v Edward (2023) [H0KF6C9C]. Your paragraph reads as if that line of authority—and PoFA Schedule 4—never existed. That is not advocacy—it is omission.
5. Protocol still matters.
You have also declined to supply basic pre-action documents (landowner authority, signage plan/photos at the material time, VRM/payment audit logs, and the legal basis for any add-ons). Trade association templates can’t displace the PAPDC or CPR. If you intend to litigate, start by complying with the rules.
To be crystal clear: I am the registered keeper. I am not obliged to identify the driver and I decline to do so. If your client cannot (a) show strict PoFA compliance or (b) adduce real evidence of driver identity, proceedings will be defended. Your “reasonable conclusion” will be a useful exhibit of the Claimant’s approach to both evidence and law.
If you are serious about litigation, re-issue a PAPDC-compliant letter with the core documents you intend to rely upon. Otherwise, do save everyone’s time (and your client’s money) and discontinue this attempt at reverse-engineering liability.
Yours faithfully,
I Palmer
If it were me, I'd also CC in the Claimant so they can see how utterly incompetent Moorside Legal are.