Free Traffic Legal Advice

Your defence was too brief and doesn't flow.

I've sexed it up a bit.

Your first two points are fine.

Feel free to use this if you feel it helps;




3. It is accepted that I was the Registered Keeper of the vehicle in question at the material time.

4. All my evidence is presented as the Registered Keeper.

5. The driver is not known to the Claimant and, as this is a contract dispute, I will not be providing any driver details since the law does not demand it.

6. That I will rely on the persuasive Appeal Court case of VCS Ltd v Edward if required in order to demonstrate that no assumption can be drawn from my refusal to provide driver details to the Claimant.

7. The Claimant specifies that they are relying on the Protection of Freedoms Act (2012) (PoFA) in order to transfer liability from the unknown driver to myself as they have not identified the driver.

8. That the Claimant is unable to use PoFA since their Notice to Keeper (NtK) has not complied with ALL relevant requirements of PoFA Schedule 4 Paragraph 9(2).

9. That in particular, their NtK is missing required mandatory wording from both Paragraph 9(2)(e) and Paragraph 9(2)(f).

10. That 9(2)(e) specifies that; "The notice MUST STATE that the creditor does not know both the name of the driver and a current address for service" - this mandatory wording is not present on the Claimants NtK and therefore they have not met the required level of compliance set out in the Act.

11. Additionally, that 9(2)(f) specifies that the NtK must, amongst other things, warn the keeper that the parking operator is required to meet all the applicable conditions under PoFA Schedule 4 in order to rely on PoFA - the wording which sets out this warning is absent from the parking operators NtK - once again, this is fatal to the Claimant's reliance of PoFA.

12. That no 'period of parking' is either stated or demonstrated by the operators NtK - A single timestamp is not 'a period of parking'.

13. That the Claimant's failure to invoke keeper liability is immediately fatal to this claim since there is now legal route by which the Claimant can hold me liable.

14. Additionally, having examined the evidence, I would draw the Court's attention to the fact that the signage (used at the location) is purely prohibitive in nature and makes no offer of contract which can be accepted by the driver - therefore any suggestion of contract is firmly denied.

15. That the signage used at the site is not adequate - the Claimant has provided no viable plan which demonstrates where their alleged signage was placed in relation to the vehicle in question and their photographs of the vehicle show no signage in the locality.

16. That the Claimant's evidence does not demonstrate anything more than a brief stop - this was not parking.

17. That the Claimant's evidence does not demonstrate that the operator's Code of Conduct required "Period of Consideration" has been correctly applied in this instance - The Code requires that drivers are afforded at least 5 minutes in order to locate signage and examine contractual options - nothing in the Claimant's evidence demonstrates that the vehicle was present for longer than any consideration period and therefore, not withstanding my previous points, the Claimant is not able to demonstrate that a parking contract was formed.

I added point 17 which I think is relevant and not covered off in the Claimant's WS.

In fact, there's some evidence in the Claimant's WS which could further help you at a hearing but that doesn't need to be revealed to the Court at this stage.

There are essentially 2 different points to consider.

Technically it is entirely appropriate to expand upon a point raised by the other party.

However, District Judges (including the more common Deputy District Judges) often like to make a provisional decision based on the papers, prior to the hearing, subject to minor tweaking for minor details likely to emerge during the hearing. Once they have their draft judgment, and have indicated where they are provisionally going, they are often very reluctant to tear up the draft and start again, or accept that their provisional decision was wrong.

I have amended the WS and included the points from Intercity, thank you again.

in your opinion DWMB2 and Andy, should I add anything about Mazur or anything else or is this okay to submit?

I believe I need to save it as a PDF and email it to manchestercivil@justice.gov.uk and include the date & time of hearing and case number in the email? Do I need to include anything else. I will also send it to info@cpmsmanchester.com

I generally take 3 copies of anything I might wish to rely on/refer to during the hearing - your defence, witness statement etc.

One copy for you, one for the claimant's representative, and one for the judge. The other 2 parties should already have copies of everything, but if you have your own copies available, it hopefully prevents it being an issue if one party claims not to have a copy of something.

I would make sure you have a copy of the claimant's WS and particulars etc. so that you have them to hand as well.

The case is listed for tommorow. Thank you for the advice so far, and I plan on taking 3 copies of everything, the claimants WS and evidence along with the VCS Ltd V Edward case.

As advised, I will mainly try to argue point 14 in my skeleton argument:  that the signage at the location is prohibitive in nature and does not form a contract as there was no offer of valuable consideration.

Any other pointers and tips would be appreciated as it is my first time attending court to defend a claim.  If the other party does not turn up, will the case still be looked at or will I automatically win?

I attended the hearing and arrived 30 mins early. The claimants representative was already there, it seemed to be somebody qualified and not the paralegal 'under supervision' from BW Legal.

We went into the court and the judge listened to the claimants argument first.  The judge asked the claimant about the signage and where the signage was in relation to where the vehicle was parked - the claimant struggled to provide an answer and eventually admitted she did not have that information with her, only a seperate picture of the signage and pictures of my vehicle.

The judge then turned to me and told me 'Good news, as the claimant cannot prove their case it is dismissed!'

A great result and a huge thank you to DWMB2, Intercity and andy_foster for all the help - I certainly would not have been able to do it without you and I have learnt some things as opposed to blindly paying hundreds of pounds to line the pockets of chancers.

I did mention to the claimants side before we went in that I had to take the afternoon off work to attend (and pay an outrageous £12 to park for a couple of hours!)

Nothing was mentioned about a counterclaim or claiming for loss of earnings to attend.  I am self employed so what proof would I need to provide to claim?