Free Traffic Legal Advice
Live cases legal advice => Private parking tickets => Topic started by: bobb on June 23, 2025, 05:04:19 pm
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Just follow the advice you receive here and your son will not be paying a penny to ECP. I will accept any bets of £100 that this will never see the inside of a courtroom.
You can safely ignore all debt recovery letters, whether from DRP or any other bottom-dwelling debt collector. All they can do is to try and persuade the low-hanging fruit on the gullible tree to pay up out of ignorance and fear.
Come back when your son receives a Letter of Claim (LoC). It will cone from DCB Legal (not DCBL). We will provide a suitable response and also the necessary defence when the actual claim form arrives.
As I said, I'm confident enough to accept a £100 bet with anyone who disagrees with my prediction that ay claim will either be struck out or discontinued before the claimant has to pay the £27 trail fee.
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Exceeding the time limit by more than the grace period, usually 10 minutes, will result in a PCN, don't get hung up on whether you think its justified or not, that argument went out in 2015 thanks to Beavis vs Parking Eye. The 6 stages are something made up by the debt collectors, the only important next step is a letter of claim. Also don't worry about a CCJ, you only get one of those if you lose in court and don't pay what the court orders, around £250. It's unlikely to get to that point though.
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Thanks so much for your quick reply. All future mail will be opened promptly. The agency is Debt Recovery Plus and they say we are in the 3rd of 6 stages. the next stage is DRP seeking Pre-legal resolution followed by Recommend legal action. The final stage is county court judgement.
If the car was parked over the time limit by 24 minutes I don't see how it can be justified. I'm also worried the debt will mount up whilever the letters are being ignored. Thankyou.
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Is it possible to ignore the letters as they're not registered post, saying we never received them ?
No - lying to try and escape liability for an alleged debt is a bad idea. At best, it won't work. At worst, he would risk turning what is currently a civil matter into a criminal one.
There is no requirement for them to send letters by registered post - a letter sent by regular post is presumed delivered 2 working days after sending, for the purposes of relevant legislation.
The good news with Euro Car Parks is that, although they will probably eventually take the matter to court, they will likely use DCB Legal to do so. In our experience, for a single ticket, where a DCB Legal charge is defended, they pretty much always discontinue before the matter reaches court. So, if your son follows our advice, he's a very strong chance of winning. The important thing however, is that he'll need to open all his post promptly, or make arrangements for it to be opened for him. Letters sent by debt collectors can be ignored - if/when he receives a "Letter of Claim", you should come back here for advice.
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Hi all.
My son is the registered keeper of a car that received a parking charge notice on 31/3/25 by euro car parks for staying 2hrs 24mins when the limit was 2hrs. He never opened the letter, thinking it was spam. He received a 2nd letter from euro car parks, again (stupidly) ignored. When a 3rd letter came 2 days ago he opened it. The 3rd letter was from a debt collecting agency saying the debt has gone from £100 to £170. The initial debt was £100 reduced to £60 if paid within 28 days. If I'd known I'd have paid £60 after the 1st letter.
Is it possible to ignore the letters as they're not registered post, saying we never received them ?
£170 is a lot of money to pay and the letter says the next stage is £280 which is scary.
Btw my son is in his first year of teacher training, visiting schools across the county and it's been work/sleep for him the past 8 months. He doesn't want a ccj on his record, especially when he eventually wants a mortgage.