Free Traffic Legal Advice

Thanks @InterCity125 and @jfollows. Appreciated.

In brief, my defence is inadequate signage. My children were inside TeamSport Karting. My adult son was racing with friends and they had taken my teenage daughter to watch. I had agreed to call to pick up my daughter as my son and friends were going on elsewhere. My daughter is disabled and has a blue badge. I entered the car park, did not leave my car, except for aiding my daughter to get into the car once my son had brought her outside and arrived at the car side. We then left.

I've uploaded a 55 second to YouTube (https://youtube.com/shorts/r0WM3j5sITI?feature=share) showing the entry and journey around the car park to a blue badge space. In the first couple of seconds you see the small elevated sign at the car park entrance. You can see how this is not visible as one turns into the car park seated in the driver's seat on the opposite side. There is a photo of the sign beneath. Around the 8th second you will catch site of an unnoticeable lamppost which has a sign which is bent around it and facing the opposite way. At the 17th second you might notice a sign emerging from between two parked cars on the left which is pretty much at ground level. If there were more cars parked there, you would not see it at all. Other than that, you will observe no other signs in my journey to or whilst parked in the space. The black signs on the building mere say private parking for TeamSport customers. I have supplied a photo beneath of a sign in the car park that I've shown was not visible to me - I've provided this to complete the picture.




Here's some of the correspondence previously uploaded to imgur - the original notice from UKPC (4 letters sent in total), the first notice of debt recovery from DCBLegal (4 letters sent in total) and the letter of claim. Then there's my response to the letter of claim and a subsequent exchange with DCBLegal in the thread above that b789 kindly advised on.





I submitted my AoS yesterday. Thanks for any further guidance you can offer. In the meanwhile I will explore this terrific forum for previous advice given in similar circumstances.

TeamSport Karting Defence.


1. Liability for the alleged debt is totally denied and no money is owed to the Claimant.

2. It is acknowledged that I was the vehicle keeper at the material time.

3. That, in this instance, the vehicle driver is not known to the Claimant and the Claimant has not offered any evidence which demonstrates who was driving.

4. That, as this is a contractual dispute, there is absolutely no legal requirement for me to provide driver information to the Claimant and I will not be providing this information under any circumstance.

5. That no adverse conclusion can be drawn from my exercising my legal right to remain silent when I am not legally required to provide driver details.

6. That the operator is attempting to rely on Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 (PoFA) in order to invoke what is legally known as 'Keeper Liability'.

7. That in order to invoke Keeper Liability the Claimant must demonstrate that their original PCN Notice to Keeper (NtK) meets ALL REQUIREMENTS of PoFA Schedule 4 Paragraph 9(2).

8. That in this instance, the Claimant's NtK does not contain all of the information which Schedule 4 Paragraph 9(2) requires and, as such, Keeper Liability is not available to the Claimant.

9. That with the driver unknown and no keeper liability available, the Claimant has not legal route by which I can be held liable for the parking charges which they claim are owed.

10. Liability if therefore denied.


Additional defence points;

11. I have examined the signage at the location and it appears wholly inadequate and fails to meet the basic standard which the operators Code of Practice requires.

12. That the driver was in fact collecting a genuine customer of "TEAMSPORT" and as such, based on the signage, no term or condition was breached.

You could mention it if you wish. However, DCB Legal will almost certainly pull out before you need to produce the video.

If it did come to a hearing then you would have to take the video with you on the day and show it to the Judge on an iPad or such.