Case dismissed, many thanks once again for the help, especially
@b789.
£111 costs awarded (£95 for the time off work plus small amounts for parking and mileage, less than a tenner each). He did not award the litigant-in-person time as he did not feel the parking company were unfair in bringing the claim and also didnt find that they had abused the process or broken rules.
The judge was pleasant and in my opinion was looking for a valid reason to dismiss it. Luckily, he found one. I also think the fact I showed up and the other side didn't probably looked good and set a decent impression from the start. I think he also appreciated the concise and clearly set out arguments, big thanks to
@b789 for those.
The judge picked out the point in my witness statement about the "period of parking" needing a clearly stated beginning and end time, therefore not PoFA compliant. In other words, the judge effectively upheld my appeal that was bounced out of the kangaroo court that is the IAS.
Some important points to note. I asked the judge, after he had made his judgement, if he felt there was merit in the defective PoC argument, and he said he wouldn't have been inclined to strike out the claim on the basis given in my Defence + WS, given that there is a character limit on the PoC box on the MCOL form and the fact I clearly understood what the case was because I had been able to appeal in a very lucid manner to the IAS. I was a little surprised by this as the explanation he gave disagreed directly with the findings in Chan and Akande. I wasn't going to start arguing this as I had already won
He also said that he was not inclined to throw out the WS on grounds of no LSA 2007 authority/exemption. He said that it was acceptable for such people to write witness statements etc as long as they are not the ones signing of the actual claims forms etc. He did acknowledge however that he would take into consideration the "weighting" of the evidence, i.e. the fact that the person writing their witness statement was not "there" whereas I was, and the fact that I bothered to turn up and could questioned further on my evidence whereas they did not turn up to the hearing.
I'm glad that I didn't just rely on technical and abuse of process points because, in the end, despite there being multiple technical arguments made, I won this case based on good old fashioned failure of the parking company to comply with PoFA when they compiled the NTK.
He also said that they see a lot of parking claims come through their court and the parking companies win a lot of them (he didn't say "most", he said "a lot"). I'm not sure what the reasons for that are, it might be that a lot of the ones that lose are winnable but are poorly argued, or it might be that a lot of them are not winnable. I wouldn't like to speculate but I would urge people who intend to appeal and perhaps fight a private parking claim to post the details on this forum ASAP and get advice on what your winning points may be BEFORE the discount period elapses. At least that way, if you are not convinced yours is a winner or decide you don't have the stomach to take this all the way to court and perhaps lose £250, then at least you can pay the discounted £40-60 rather than the inflated £70-100. I have fought 80% of my parking tickets using advice from these forums and have not lost one yet, but I have paid 20% of them (2 private, 1 council) because I either didn't have the mental and nervous capacity for a fight at that time (due to life events) or, in the case of the council one, because it would have been hard to win. Pick your battles but equally don't be afraid to fight back and you don't have to accept being bullied by these vultures.
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