Free Traffic Legal Advice

Hi B789,

I was wondering if you knew what I should do next.

Any input would be very welcome and your help so far is greatly appreciated.

Update: Portal chat tool and email reply.

Portal Chat Tool (I mention this incase it is relevant in the future)

As I had not heard from them, I thought I would check on their portal but could not login. I used their chat tool to work out why, and they said I did not have the right type of account as there are two types. They then tried to respond to the letter you provided 'Response to Your Letter of Claim' in the chat tool by attaching docs and files to download. I stopped them by saying I do not want to deal with this in a chat tool and asked them to respond by email.

Email Reply (Dated 12th November 2025)
[For your reference the Reply to Letter of Claim was submitted to their portal on 24th September 2025]

They replied by email (full text at bottom of post) with a range of attachments, all of which seem to relate to only one of the two claims they are making against me, the one dated 23/07/2022. The other one was not mentioned at all.

The documents they provided seem to show a vehicle staying in a B&Q carpark for 14 minutes, and the reason for the claim is 'unauthorised parking'. I have no idea what the parking terms were back in 2022 or why the vehicle would have not been authorised to park, but I believe currently it is 'customer parking for one hour only'. I have one loose theory but do not know if I should say here, and if it is true B&Q need to do better.

Below are links to the two copies of the PCN and 'Final Notice' issued back in 2022, they included these with the most recent email. There are images of the car and licence number but I didn't include them as you can only see the licence number and I would have to redact that anyway.

https://ibb.co/QjtBD6hD
https://ibb.co/Pscpz6Qz

Please let me know if these links do not work. I tried attaching them but that function is not available to me.

I should add, I have no memory of ever receiving the original PCN in 2022.

---------------------------------------------------------------

Their email to me:

Dear Recipient,

Thank you for contacting us, please find our response below:

We write in reference to your recent contact, the contents of which have been duly noted.

Upon entering the Car Park, the signage in situ (i.e. the "offer") made clear the terms and conditions associated with parking on the private land. By your action of entering the Car Park, and remaining there in excess of the consideration period, it is our Client's position that your actions were tantamount to an acceptance of the terms and conditions.

It is our Client's position, therefore, that you did enter into a contract with our Client, and are therefore liable for any consequences of breaching the same. If you did not agree to the terms and conditions, you should have vacated the Car Park within the consideration period. You evidently did not do this, and therefore our Client is satisfied that you remain liable for the PCN.

Please note that we will not be providing a copy of the agreement between our Client and the landowner. The document is commercially sensitive and shall only be produced if the matter progresses to formal hearing at Court. However we can confirm that our Client holds the necessary right with the landowner to issue PCN's and take legal action to recover outstanding balances where needed.

The Parking Charge issued is for the sum of £70.00 and our additional costs amount to £60.00. The relevant Code of Practice laid out by the International Parking Community (IPC) states that £70.00 is a reasonable amount to charge for the breach of contract within our Client's car parks. The additional cost of £60.00 represents the nature and type of work undertaken by debt recovery agents in the collection of the balance of the unpaid Parking Charge. Our Client is satisfied that you remain liable for the cost of the PCN and the costs of debt recovery, due to non-payment of the charge in question.

 

If you would like to view the full contact history or submit a new query, please log into our Customer Portal by clicking here.

So, I should ignore the chaser/reminder letter?

I assume I can ignore is as it was dated the day before I uploaded my reply to their LoC via thier portal.

Hi jfollows,

Thanks for letting me know. Oddly, it was not working here in Thailand but when I set the VPN to the UK it worked fine for me.

Below is all the text ChatGPT extracted from the first and second page. The third page is just a form.
----------

We write to advise that your Letter of Claim is due to expire on 02 October 2025. The Letter of Claim is the formal notice issued before any commencement of legal proceedings to recover the outstanding balance of £260.00. Once the Letter of Claim expires, legal proceedings for the full balance can be issued without further notice, increasing your balance by additional costs and fees in the Letter of Claim.

If you want to avoid this, consider the benefits below, and then take the steps to get your case back on track. We can extend you some further time; we have a final offer. If that is not affordable, then all you have to do is call us. Considering your circumstances, we will set up the most affordable solution for you.

What benefits do you have once you have set an arrangement to pay?

Legal Proceedings will not be issued.

You would avoid a future County Court Judgment or Enforcement action.

You would avoid a CCJ’s negative impact on your Credit File.

If this account is being reported to credit reference agencies, then setting up a repayment plan will help improve your credit score as the balance reported each month reduces.

If a County court claim is issued and not paid or has an agreed plan set or where the reason to defend the claim has not been filed, this could lead to a County Court Judgment (“CCJ”) being entered. Should a CCJ be entered against you, it will, where applicable, remain on your credit file and/or the Register of Judgments, Orders, and Fines for up to six years and may impact your ability to obtain future credit.

Here is how we can help you reduce the balance with a 30% discount offer

Our clients want to help to reduce the balance strictly without prejudice they will give a discount against the balance of 30%. You can settle the balance in full for £182.00. This offer will expire on 07 October 2025 so act quickly.

If you can’t pay the discounted offer in full, no problem; you can still have the discounted if you set an arrangement to pay by 07 October 2025. You can discuss repayment solutions with us, or we have in place for you a pre-approved monthly plan of £32.50, which has been considered based on estimated disposable income.

The benefit of accepting this is that your plan is set for the discounted amount of £182.00. As long as you maintain your arrangement, our client will write off the discount percentage of 30% on receipt of your final payment, which will then be reported to the credit bureau as a partial settlement. In the meantime, as you make payments and reduce the balance you owe, when our client reports this to the credit reference agency, it may have a positive impact on your score.

This offer is made strictly without prejudice and must be accepted by 07 October 2025. Following the expiry of this letter, the discount offer will no longer be available, and the full current balance of £260.00 may be pursued via a County court claim.

Reminder of the personal repayment solution that is due to expire

We have discussed with our client how they might also help with any possible financial burden that you may be experiencing and we are able to re-offer you the opportunity to pay the amount owing with a pre-approved monthly instalment amount of £32.50.

How do you get in touch?

If this is affordable, the quickest way to accept the offer is to log in or register to use our customer portal at portal.bwlegal.co.uk. The pre-approved settlement and plan are ready for you to accept.

Call us on 0113 487 0430 to accept the offer, and we can set up the plan for you.

Chat with us at bwlegal.co.uk/customers.

For alternative ways to make payment, please see the reverse of this letter.

Don’t worry if you cannot afford the pre-approved instalment amount. Call us on 0113 487 0430 so that we can assist you and we will find the right affordable and sustainable amount that you can pay by running through your affordability.

If you need to raise a query or tell us why you can't pay the balance

You can do this by contacting us via a secure webform, or by webchat at bwlegal.co.uk/customers. We will pick up your query and hold your case while we investigate and get back to you. You can also raise this with us by talking to one of our agents on 0113 487 0430.

Important information about discount offers

When you set up a discounted repayment plan, the discount will be removed if you default on the arrangement you made and the plan is set back up within the defaulted period. The entire remaining balance will be due. Future discounts may be considered or offered by our client, but they could be less than previously offered amounts.

We always recommend contacting us if you need help maintaining your arrangement so we can help you and preserve your discount.

Yours sincerely
BW Legal

Ok, description below.

The BW Legal portal requires a lot of personal information to login, including vehicle registration number, date of birth and phone number, all of which I was not willing to supply as they had not shown that they already possessed this information. So, I tried a lot of ways to satisfy the *required fields in the login form, and one combination finally worked. I am outlining it below so other might benefit.

The main form asks for a lot of this information but it is possible to force it to let you use a less demanding form. The process i used involved the below steps:

- Enter the details into the form that you are willing to share (for me it was name, address, email and reference number).
- In the fields you do not wish to complete, add enough dummy text to satisfy the requirements for the fields and the 'submit' button should become clickable.
- Click 'Submit' and there will be a message saying they were not able to match the details to their records and the 'submit' button becomes unclickable.
- In one of the fields change the text slightly and the 'Submit' button will become clickable again.
- Click 'Submit' and this time a new error message will appear offering the option to complete a different form to gain limited access to your account.
- Click the link and complete all you are willing to of the new form and enter dummy text in the fields you do not wish to complete - make the dummy text obviously fake (0700000000 for the phone number, for example).
- Submit this and you should be brought to a page where you can choose different option to contact them etc.

I hope this helps somebody!
 

Hi jfollows,

I sent it off and got an immediate reply by email basically saying they will not accept communication by email and I should use the portal (full text below).

Should I go through the portal? I am not sure what I should do. Do you think they are just a phishing scam, trying to get my personal information?


Text from their reply:

"Important Notice Please Read

This email address is no longer a valid email address to contact BW Legal. Your email has not been received. It is being returned as undelivered and we have not received any information from you.

We thank you for trying to contact us and have set out below the correct way to get in touch.

BW Legal has changed the way it communicates with its customers. We have done this so that we can help identify and understand your needs quicker and respond in a more efficient and secure environment.

To get in touch with us now, all you have to do is click on the 'Contact Us' button below and you will be taken to our Customer Contact Portal. Following a few very quick security questions to establish that you are our customer and to locate your account, you will then be able to complete a Contact Form which is a secure form that we will respond to.

For any future contact you can just visit our website at www.bwlegal.co.uk and select our help and support page. "

On Saturday 13th September I discovered I had received a Letter of Claim from a company called BW Legal (embedded below). It claims they made ‘several efforts to contact’ me about a balance of £260, owed to their client Total Parking Solution Limited for ‘2 unpaid parking charges’.

Later in the letter they offer a ‘summary of outstanding PCNs’ showing them to be from July and October 2022 and are for £70 each. They offer no further information about the perceived breach of parking rules or location of the claimed incident. 

I have no recollection of any PCNs around that time, nor have I received any prior communication from BW Legal or Total Parking Solutions.

Nowhere on the letter does it refer to a particular vehicle by number plate or description. I have no way to know if they are even referring to the vehicle of which I am the registered owner.

Sorry, I cannot offer any information about the alleged incident as I have no idea what the claim is for. 

There is no email address on the letter or their website so all communication must be via letter, phone or their portal. I am overseas as the moment so by letter would be very difficult, phone is not advised (as far as I know) and I am sure the portal will want to collect a lot of my personal information so I am hesitant to use it.

I would greatly appreciate some help with this as I do not know how to proceed.

Please find the embedded images below showing every page of the letter in question. (Update: I tried adding the BB code but Imgur does not seem to offer them any more. I left the imgur link instead. Please let me know if it doesn't work)

https://imgur.com/a/fRQdM7P