Free Traffic Legal Advice

Thank you for this comprehensive and helpful response, b789.

A few months ago, a family member overstayed their time in a private Belfast car park by 20 minutes.

A few weeks later, the registered keeper of the vehicle (not the driver on the day) received a PCN because of this overstay. Given that the registered keeper – who lives in Northern Ireland – was not the driver at the time, the PCN was promptly ignored. DCBL have now started writing letters about the allegedly outstanding charge. Again, these have been ignored.

However, this morning, another family member (who has nothing to do with the vehicle beyond being a named driver) received a letter to their home address. This letter was addressed to the registered keeper but the registered keeper has never lived at this property.

The opening line of this latest missive advises that because previous correspondence went unanswered, a tracing service had been employed to identify alternative addresses. The registered keeper and the person living at the property have similar (but not the same) names. Obviously, the newest recipient of a letter from DCBL has even less of an obligation to engage with it than the registered keeper and they have no intention of doing anything other than disregarding it. That said, can DCBL be reported for sending speculative invoices to random addresses? Is there any redress for distress etc.?

That's fine.

I appreciate that you don't need to read debt recovery letters. However, I thought I would ask about this correspondence just to be sure.

Thanks for the clarity and ongoing advice.

You haven't engaged with them, have you? If not, don't. The notion that a parking firm based in London is going to instruct solicitors in Northern Ireland to come after you in the local small-claims court does not seem likely.

Also, in addition to the excellent advice set out in an earlier post, debt collection letters in Northern Ireland are useless because that's not how it works here. We don't have bailiffs and we don't have debt collectors. We have the courts and the Enforcement of Judgements Office. It is a much better regulated and drawn-out system.

Many thanks. My appeal to the IAS has just been dismissed.

Thank you very much. This is what I'm getting at.

Bristol Airport cannot have bylaws in place governing things like stopping and parking but choose not to enforce them through the criminal courts, allowing instead a private contractor to issue demands for payment in the wake of alleged contractual breaches relating to the very behaviour that the bylaws cover. There cannot be two parallel regimes, one statutory and the other contractual, covering the same acts on the same land. 

To be clear again, VCS has made no comment whatsoever about the bylaws. They said nothing to me (in spite of the fact that I challenged them on this very issue) and clearly wanted to contribute nothing to The Guardian on the topic. If the land was not covered by the bylaws, why would VCS be shy about saying so? The same goes for Bristol Airport itself. If the bylaws don't apply, then roads directly adjacent to the airport, which it clearly owns, do not fall within the scope of the 'the Airport', as referenced on page 4 of those bylaws. No plan is attached to that document; however, page 11 of this document shows the boundaries of the airport in 2006. The area at issue in my case is very much inside this boundary, even if the footprint has changed slightly in the years since.

The article references the Airports Act 1986. Is the fact that motorists are being pursued for alleged contractual breaches on lands falling under the authority of airport bylaws not an issue? Stopping where you've been told not to stop in an airport is, theoretically, a contravention of a clearly identifiable bylaw, not some legally dubious contract, surely?

Thank you for this very extensive reply. I’m concerned to note that VCS would not be required to try and actually recover the debt. They could leave it unenforced, collecting no money themselves but impacting my credit score.

Does any part of your response relate to bylaws?

Also, would the identity of the driver not be examined during a court hearing? Or are you saying that my refusal to answer that question in a court setting would be a sufficient defence?