Free Traffic Legal Advice

Someone was driving my car and parked outside of some shops in Iver for about an hour last year on the 27th of March. I took the case to the IAS with the argument of: "Paragraph 16.1 of the IPC's code of practice says 'Where a parking charge is issued Notices must comply with the applicable requirements set out in Schedule 3'. Schedule 3 echoes the POFA requirement for a period of parking to be specified in the NTK and refers to an example NTK in appendix 5 where the following form of words is prescribed.

'Period of parking:

From: (Date and Time of entry)
To: (Date and Time of Exit)"




The appeal was rejected and I thought that was the last I had heard from them, I am no longer the owner of the vehicle and I have since moved from the house where they knew where I last was.

The resident there has only just now informed me of some parking charge letters from Gladstone have been through in the mail and are saying they're taking me to court in 25 days. I've had no additional correspondence post issue, no attempts to contact me via email etc.

What's the next step for me here, thanks in advance.

If you moved since the PCN was issued, you should send a Data Rectification Notice (DRN) to Euro Parking Services (Not ECP as wrongly stated in the thread title) and instruct them to update your address for service to your current address and to erase your old address. The highlighted words are there for a reason so use them.

It sounds as though they have referred the case to Gladstones Solicitors who have probably issued a Letter of Claim (LoC). You really need to get hold of the letters that have been sent to the old address. If a claim has been issued and it is not responded to in time, you are likely to get a CCJ by default.

Your original appeal and waste of time IAS appeal were never going to succeed as there definitely is a "period of parking" stated on the Notice to Keeper (NtK). In fact, that NtK is about as PoFA compliant as you can get.

There is a fairly good chance that the claim would be struck out because Gladstones are pretty incompetent when submitting claims as they always fail to comply with CPR 16.4(1)(a), which if you can persuade a judge that such a failure justifies the claim being struck out, will work. You will be relying on the persuasive appeals judgments in CEL v Chan (2023) and CPMS v Akande (2023).

However, it is judge bingo whether you get one who is actually "persuaded" by the appeal judgments as they are not "binding". However, even f it were to go "all the way" and you were not successful, you would likely pay less than the claim amount as they have added a fake £60 or £70 which most judges do not allows in a small claims case.

Also, before it ever went as far as a hearing, you'd have an opportunity in a mediation phone call to try and haggle the amount down from what they are claiming. It would come down to how strong an argument you could put in a Witness Statement (WS) if it did progress all the way without being struck-out or discontinued.

I'd put the odds at greater than 50% but not as high as over 99% I would give in many cases. Decisions!

The date of charge is the 25/07/2024, I gave that vehicle back around the end of March 2024. Crisis averted.

Providing you can demonstrate that you were not the keeper of the vehicle at the time... The fact that Gladstones are chasing you for a vehicle you claim you were not the keeper or hirer of at the time suggests something has gone wrong somewhere there.