Hi All
This area of land used to be a school but on development turned into a shopping area but the car park was always free until Costa rolled up, even the signs inside the Costa itself have proven insufficient and many people have been caught out here.
The driver had not been here for a long time and thus entered the car park oblivious to the fact that is was now 'Private Land' so no signs were noticed.
No signage present where the driver alighted from the car.
The overstay was just over two hours in a 90 minute allowance. Apparently, the car park was pretty busy so there vans, 4x4s cars etc all over, possibly obscuring the scant signage present.
I am the registered keeper, who ignored/binned all Ntks (in the hope that would work like a Parking Eye situation did in the past)
So I never denied or admitted or appealed, though I did reach out to Costa who were going to see what they could do but returned with "The landowner says no"
I also reached out to the land owner but received no reply.
Upon receiving the serious recovery letters, first from Civil Enforcement then DCB Legal I employed the 30 day 'seeking financial advice' tactic as this would have eventually put me into action around Christmas week.
Claim Form was received on Friday 24th Jan, I submitted the AOS the following day, the letter was dated 22nd Jan so by my reckoning this gives me till 24th Feb for defence submittal??
Link to photos of car park/signage and POC
https://imgur.com/a/costa-car-park-signage-II7wXIGGoogle maps link to car park
https://www.google.com/maps/@54.620809,-1.56966,3a,75y,36.74h,87.31t/data=!3m7!1e1!3m5!1sJ-WlldRrAykB5pFKBkWx-w!2e0!6shttps:%2F%2Fstreetviewpixels-pa.googleapis.com%2Fv1%2Fthumbnail%3Fcb_client%3Dmaps_sv.tactile%26w%3D900%26h%3D600%26pitch%3D2.6872621787873214%26panoid%3DJ-WlldRrAykB5pFKBkWx-w%26yaw%3D36.73616117611584!7i16384!8i8192?entry=ttu&g_ep=EgoyMDI1MDEyMi4wIKXMDSoASAFQAw%3D%3D(Funnily enough, the red brick building across from Costa is the county court so I could take the magistrate there should it come to that

)
Thanks in advance.