My WS as I intend to send it... any problems anyone can spot?
In the county court at Middlesbrough Claim No:
Between
Vehicle Control Services Limited
(Claimant)
V
(Defendant)
Witness Statement
Introduction
It is admitted that the Defendant is the registered keeper of XXnn XXX
Locus standi/bye-laws and Relevant land
Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedom Act 2012 (PoFA) allows recovery of unpaid parking charges from the keeper of the vehicle. However, the first paragraph 1 (1) (a) states that it only applies “in respect of parking of the vehicle on relevant land:”. The definition of “relevant land” is given in paragraph 3 (1) where subsection (c) excludes “any land ... on which the parking of a vehicle is subject to statutory control”.
The bus stop is not on relevant land because the public road on which that stand is on is covered by the Road Traffic Act.
Notwithstanding that the claimant claims that " the claimant has given the Defendant its contractual licence to enter the site", the claimant has not given any contractual licence whatsoever. This is a road leading to/from the airport which is covered by the Road Traffic Act.
A list of highways on the Highways act 1980 does not even exist. The defendant brings the attention of the court that VCS is using this non existent document issue as a deliberate strategy to debunk the fact that this road is not relevant land. VCS are put to strict proof that it is relevant land not covered by the Road Traffic Act nor by Byelaws.
While it is true that landowners can bring in their own terms, it is also true that whatever terms they bring cannot overrule Byelaws and the Road Traffic Act.
If Bye Laws are involved then the bus stop is not relevant land and neither is the specious argument about First Great Western Ltd. Is the claimant ignorant of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012? The road outside of Doncaster Sheffield Airport is not relevant land and is not covered by the Protection of Freedoms Act. That makes the charge against the claimant tantamount to fraud or extortion.
The claimant mentions a couple occasions where they have won such cases. It is brought to the attention of the court that none of those cited cases were on airport land. VCS actually has also lost a lot more cases than they have won using their prohibitive signs. Airport land is covered by Bye Laws and hence the claim by VCS is not applicable in this instance. The remit of VCS ends in the car park and does not extend to the bus stops on public roads or land which they have no jurisdiction over.
All classes of people go to the airport. This includes travellers, taxis, fuel bowsers, airport staff, companies delivering food and drink for each aircraft, air traffic controllers and buses with passengers. It is therefore absolutely ridiculous to attribute VCS with any sort of permissions. The defendant submits that VCS should not confuse a major thoroughfare with a car park and presume to act as land owners and usurp the control of any land which is not relevant to them.
Protection of Freedoms Act
The clearest point on section 4.1 of the Protection of Freedoms act is that “The provisions in Schedule 4 are intended to apply only on private land in England and Wales. Public highways are excluded as well as any parking places on public land which are either provided or controlled by a local authority (or other government body). Any land which already has statutory controls in relation to the parking of vehicles (such as byelaws applying to airports, ports and some railway station car parks) is also excluded.” Therefore, as this case pertains to an airport, the claimant unlawfully obtained the registered keeper’s details against the defendant’s vehicle. Thus, on this basis alone, the defendant implores the court to throw out this case.
Notwithstanding the above point, if perchance Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms act 2012 were to apply, the claimant is put to strict proof that they complied with the requirements of section 7 stating, “(1)A notice which is to be relied on as a notice to driver for the purposes of paragraph 6(1)(a) is given in accordance with this paragraph if the following requirements are met.
The notice must — (a)specify the vehicle, the relevant land on which it was parked and the period of parking to which the notice relates;” Without such proof the court must of necessity throw out this case forthwith.
Deceit, Intimidation and Extortion
The Claimant’s Particulars of Claim include £50 legal costs, yet in the letter dated 03/06/2021, the Claimant stated that they were no longer represented by Elms Legal and all further correspondence should be sent to the VCS in-house litigation department. Why should the Claimant be asking the Defendant to contribute to their employee’s salary?
Furthermore, as per another letter dated 30th July 2021, the Claimant wrote, ‘Should you fail to accept our offer of settlement then we will proceed to Trial and bring this letter to the Court’s attention upon question of costs in order seek further costs of £220 incurred in having to instruct a local Solicitor to attend the hearing in conjunction with the amount claimed on the Claim Form.’ I find this an extraordinary statement given the Claimant knows legal costs are capped at £50 in Small Claims Court. I cannot think of any reason why the Claimant would write this letter other than to intimidate the opposing party with the threat of an extortionate sum of money, hoping they would be able to take advantage of someone not knowing the Small Claims Court rules. Given that this letter came from the Claimant’s in-house litigation department, clearly well-versed in the law, this cannot be anything but deceitful and disingenuous behaviour which the court should never tolerate.
Contractual costs / debt recovery charge
In addition to the £50 legal costs, the Claimant is seeking recovery of the original £100 parking charge plus an additional £60 which is described as ‘debt collection costs’. In the Vehicle Control Service v Claim Number: 18 on 4th September 2019, District Judge Jones-Evans stated, ‘Upon it being recorded that District Judge Jones-Evans has over a very significant period of time warned advocates […] in many cases of this nature before this court that their claim for £60 is unenforceable in law and is an abuse of process and is nothing more than a poor attempt to go behind the decision of the Supreme Court in Beavis which inter alia decided that a figure of £160 as a global sum claimed in this case would be a penalty and not a genuine pre-estimate of loss and therefore unenforceable in law and if the practice continued he would treat all cases as a claim for £160 and therefore a penalty and unenforceable in law. It is hereby declared […] the claim be struck out and declared to be wholly without merit and an abuse of process.’
In Claim number F0DP806M and F0DP201T, Britannia v Crosby went further in a landmark judgement in November 2019 which followed several parking charge claims being struck out in the area overseen by His Honour Judge Iain Hamilton-Douglas Hughes GC, the Designated Civil Judge for Dorset, Hampshire, Isle of White & Wiltshire. District Judge Taylor echoed the earlier General Judgement or Orders of District Judge Grand stating, ‘It is ordered that the claim is struck out as an abuse of process. The claim contains a substantial charge additional to the parking charge which it is alleged the Defendant contracted to pay. This additional charge is not recoverable under the Protection of Freedom Acts 2012, Schedule 4 nor with reference to the judgment in ParkingEye v Beavis. It is an abuse of process from the Claimant to issue a knowingly inflated claim for an additional sum which it is not entitled to recover. This order has been made by the court of its own initiative without a hearing pursuant to CPR Rule 3.3(4) of the Civil Procedure Rules 1998…’ Vehicle Control Service v Claim Number: 19 51. Moreover, the addition of costs not specified on signage are also in breach of the Consumer Rights Act 2015, Schedule 2, specifically paras 6, 10 and 14.
It is the Defendant’s position that the Claimant in this case has knowingly submitted inflated costs and thus the entire claim should be similarly struck out in accordance with Civil Procedure Rule 3.3(4).
The Defendant is of the view that the Claimant knew, or should have known, that to claim in excess of £100 for a parking charge on private lands is disallowed under the Civil Procedure Rules, the Beavis Case, the Protection of Freedom Act 2012 and Consumer Rights Act 2015, and that relief from sanctions should be refused.
Alleged contract
The court should consider if there is any contract to start with and if the alleged offence is on relevant land. The consideration will inevitably lead the court to conclude that there is no contract.
Also the court should note that there is no valid contract that exists between VCS and Peel.
Under the Companies Act, a contract should be signed by the directors of both companies and witnessed by two independent individuals. This alleged contract, which makes no mention of pursuing registered keepers of vehicles to court, makes its first appearance as a Witness Statement. Thus the alleged contract is null and void.
The Beavis case referred to by the claimant is about parking in a car park. The claimant is here attempting to equate that case to stopping, not parking, in a bus stop and on a road that is covered by the Road Traffic Act.
The defendant submits that there can be no contract as there is no offer but there is only a prohibition. Again, it is not relevant land and VCS has absolutely no rights over it.
Further, the defendant would like to point out that motorists NEVER accept any contract just by entering the land. First they must read it and understand it and then, and only then can they realise that "No stopping" is prohibitive and cannot offer a contract.
Bus stop signage
The signs around the bus stop do not mention who issued the “No Stopping” signs so it could not have been issued by VCS since the IPC CoP states that their signs should include the IPC logo and that the creditor should be identified. Nothing on the signs around the bus stop that says “NO Stopping” mentions VCS or Peel Investments who are now purporting to be the land owners of a public road. As the signage should identify the creditor, since it does not, this is a breach of the CoP.
The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 does not prohibit stopping in a restricted bus stop or stand, it prohibits stopping in a clearway.
The defendant would like to ask the court to consider if any clause of the Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions 2016 that the claimant alleges has been violated by the defendant. There is no mention of permits on the signage. If there were, would it mean that Permit holders were allowed to stop on “No Stopping” roads?
Notwithstanding what the claimant calls it, the mentioned signage is NOT a contractual clause. A “No stopping” sign is not an offer of parking terms. Since the signage around the bus stop is prohibitive, it is as such is incapable of forming a contract.
Further, the defendant would like to point out that the prohibitive sign is not actually at the bus stop but a few metres before the stand itself.
There is no mention of a £100 charge for breaching the “No stopping” request, or if there is one then it is far too small to read, even for a pedestrian.
As already stated, a Witness Statement between VCS and Peel Investments is not a valid document.
It will need more than the Claimants feather to outweigh the case against the Defendant regardless of who was driving.
There is no law of agency involved. This is not a case of employer/employee relationship. VCS cannot transfer the driver's liability to the registered keeper.
There can be no comparison between a railway station and an airport. This is a totally fatuous analogy which cannot be applied to this case.
As stated in the defence, it is denied the Claimant is entitled to the recovery or any recovery at all. The nefarious parking charge notice given for a vehicle on a public road bus stop was ill advised to start with.
Conclusions:
VCS has failed to present ANY reasonable and valid cause to apply to the DVLA for the Defendants details.
VCS has failed to provide ANY valid contract with the landowners.
“No stopping” is prohibitive therefore cannot form a contract
the event happened on a bus stop over which VCS has no jurisdiction
the signage either does not show that there was a charge of £100 for stopping, or the font size was too small for any motorist to be able to read it
the signage does not show the Creditor which fails the IPC CoP and hence the signage is not valid
the WS contract does not authorise VCS to pursue motorists to Court
Given all these factors it seems that VCS have breached the GDPR of the Defendant quite substantially and it would appear right that an exemplary award is made against VCS in the hope that they will drop all further cases at Doncaster airport where they are pursuing motorists on non relevant land.
The Defendant wishes to bring to the attention of the court that the Claimant cites an irrelevant case of a car park and tries to apply its merits to a bus stop. That in itself invalidates the entire fallacious claim.
Accordingly, this case is totally without merit. Some statements are pretty close to perjury and others are designed to mislead or misdirect. None of the analogies seem appropriate or relevant. All the false information presented as a statement of truth could have been stated using half the words and without all the repetition which appears to be trying to build a strong case where there is none at all. One particularly bad example of misdirection is in the photographs. The Clearway sign shown near the bus stop is very unclear unlike the Clearway sign two photos before it which may well include terms and conditions. The one by the bus stop is totally different.
47. Lastly I wish to bring to the attention of the court, a systematic pattern of the Claimant’s court action behaviour in several of their cases. They tend to have a VCS paralegal writing a Witness Statement, then mentioning in the last paragraph of the Witness Statement that they may be unable to attend court and subsequently the paralegals never turn up to be cross examined. In the event that Mohammed Wali is unable to attend court to be asked about his claims, then I would like to know why he is not able to attend when the hearing has been scheduled months in advance, is during working hours and as a result of covid, is online, meaning there is no travel involved. Ambreen Arshad, the other paralegal employed by VCS, does exactly the same.
