Free Traffic Legal Advice

The most common reason for no NTK being received and the first you hear about it is debt collectors is that the vehicles V5C was not updated after a move to reflect the vehicle's new address.

Plan A is always to pop along to Burghfield to see if the pub can cancel the charge. As you say, do not engage either collectors.

To answer your questions: they will probably get debt collectors involved to try to scare you into paying. This will have no effect on you whatsoever and they can be completely ignored, they are powerless and can only send you vaguely threatening letters. After that they may send it to court but as they don't have a case due to your lease having primacy, this will simply be the next stage in getting the gullible to give them money. If it does get that far they will very probably discontinue the case when they have to pay the court fees. You must defend the claim though, otherwise they will obtain a default judgement against you and get some money that way.

All they care about is money and they use every trick in the book to get it.

Do not feel bound by politeness to respond to debt collectors. They can do nothing except send you letters and should be ignored completely. If you respond to them you could make things worse for yourself by revealing something that you shouldn't. There is no upside for you all.

Are they a tenant and if so what does their tenancy agreement say about parking?

Just note that frustration of contract won't fly here. You had the option of paying using the NCP app for a start.

See here

https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6377263/dcb-legal-record-of-private-parking-court-claim-discontinuations

It's a common tactic from the robo recovery companies, they will file a claim so that you receive a notice from the courts, as they know that this makes people pay straight away. They obviously can't send people to thousands of court cases so they discontinue when they have to pay money to the courts to proceed.