Moloney judgment overturned

PRESS RELEASE EMBARGOED UNTIL APRIL 16th
Do not read this before April 16th

HHJ Moloney's judgment has now been overturned in the court of appeal.

The Prankster welcomes the Court of Appeal decision which provided much needed clarity on the issue. The judgment sets a precedent as it now becomes case law and will be referred to by other Courts in matters of a similar nature. However, in some cases, everything will still be as clear as mud.

Lord Justice Briggs commented: “But in my opinion the judge's finding... was based upon a view of the law for which there is no authority, which is wrong in principle and the recognition of which would have most unfortunate consequences.”

The full decision is available here.

Happy Parking

(and of course I am not called) The Parking Prankster (for nothing)

BPA terminates membership of ANPR Limited

The BPA has issued the following press release.

BPA terminates membership of ANPR Limited
The British Parking Association (BPA) has terminated the membership of ANPR Limited with immediate effect.

Following investigations arising from complaints by motorists, BPA Officers awarded 16 Sanction Points covering multiple Code of Practice breaches including failing to follow agreed procedures in handling motorist appeals and failing to live up to BPA customer service requirements.

If an operator receives 12 or more Sanction Points in a 12-month period, their case is referred to the BPA Professional Conduct Panel who will review all the evidence.  In this instance the panel concluded that the membership of ANPR Ltd should be terminated.  This termination means that ANPR Limited's ability to request vehicle keeper details from the DVLA will cease.

The BPA is committed to encouraging and developing the highest standards of professional conduct and ethics within its membership. The BPA Code of Professional Conduct sets out the standards expected of those working in the profession and all BPA members commit to the code when they join the association. Unfortunately, ANPR Limited was unable to meet these standards.

The company must remove all references to the BPA and the Approved Operator Scheme (AOS) from all its business transactions, including signage in car parks they manage.

ANPR Comment

The ANPR news page gives some insight into the feud between ANPR Ltd and the BPA.

Prankster Note

As ANPR Ltd refused to put the BPA logo on their signage, this part of 'removing references' will be relatively easy.

The Prankster has assisted many motorists who fell foul of ANPR's unusual interpretation of BPA customer service requirements. He is continuing to assist motorists who are still being pursued by ANPR Ltd.

The Prankster understands Preston Council may have a number of car parks managed by ANPR and wonders what the council will do now there is no apparent way to manage them.

ANPR Ltd will presumably now attempt to obtain keeper details on behalf of landowners, using the 'Proserve' 'trespass' model. This entire model comes under judicial review on (apparently) 6 May 2015. However, while Proserve attempt to demonstrate a landowner loss by invoicing the landowner, ANPR Ltd do not do this, which does seem, in the absence of other information, that they are doomed to fail.


Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

ParkingEye ANPR system fatally flawed

ParkingEye recently issued a parking ticket to a motorist who they said had stayed almost 3 hours in a car park. They based this accusation on pictures their ANPR had taken of the vehicle arriving and leaving.

However, the motorist had visited the car park twice, once in the afternoon and then later in the early evening. ParkingEye’s system, being unfit for purpose, had failed to take pictures of the first exit and second entry.

The motorist appealed; ParkingEye responded with a threatening letter

Luckily for the motorist, they had a tracker device in their vehicle which showed their journey.

They informed ParkingEye they had as evidence a vehicle tracker and two witness statements.

On receipt of this, ParkingEye had no option but to realise their system was fatally flawed and cancel the parking charge.

The Prankster wonders how many other motorists have been charged because bugs in ParkingEye’s system fail to record two visits. Most of these motorists will not be fortunate enough to have a tracker in their vehicle, and will then be up against the ParkingEye juggernaut. The Prankster has helped many motorists in court cases where ParkingEye falsely claimed the motorist had visited once where in fact they visited twice.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

DEAL case thrown out of court. Prankster calls for evidence

In an upcoming hearing the defendant sent their witness statement to Court along with a short covering letter asking for the Court's comments regarding 'Shwarts' signing the Statement of Truth, and including a copy of the e-mail they received from the SRA detailing their investigations into 'Shwarts'. 

This prompted the Court to write to DEAL ordering full details of the solicitor; they also requested DEAL issue an amended particulars of claim specifying any Notice of Assignment. 

DEAL failed to comply by the specified date and the Claim has been struck out. 

The defendant also received DEAL's letter detailed in The Prankster's blog this week, with the 'generic' witness statement signed by Ashley Cohen and with a note of further costs of £330.

The Prankster considers claiming it cost large amounts of money to draft the witness statement to be a potential fraud and would like to submit as much evidence as possible to the authorities. Please could anyone who has received a note of further costs and a copy of Ashley Cohen's witness statement add their evidence to the pile! You can do this by emailing a copy to prankster@parking-prankster.com together with permission to forward this to the authorities and either an address or email the authorities can use to get back in touch to verify the information.

Is Ashley Cohen of Civil Enforcement Limited committing fraud or perjury?

The Parking Prankster has a collection of similar letters and witness statements from court cases involving CEL and DEAL.

Here are two, one from a CEL case and one from a DEAL case, compared side by side

Apart from a few minor differences, the two witness statements signed by Ashley Cohen are almost word for word identical. A more detailed examination reveals they contain nothing whatsoever specific to the particular cases - no dates, registrations, car park locations, or in fact anything whatsoever which can be used to distinguish the case from any other, apart from page 1 which lists the defendant name and claim number, and the last page which contains the date the witness statement was signed.

Further examination of the Prankster's records reveals more of these identical copies.

The Prankster is therefore querying why Ashley Cohen is charging £70 for 'Drafting of Claim/Witness Statement'. The particulars of claim already ask for £50 for solicitor filing fee, which means the £70 is for drafting the witness  statement, and this in confirmed in the covering letter 

The original claim was for £215 (including court issuing fees). We have also incurred legal costs of an additional £115 for drafting the Witness Statement and general handling of this file.

The £115 is therefore comprised of the £70 for drafting the witness statement and £45 for file handling.

Given the identical nature of a huge number of witness statements The Prankster therefore wonders whether Ashley Cohen did incur £70 each time this identical witness statement was 'drafted'. If he did not, The Prankster wonders whether it is fraud to ask the court for this amount.

If it turns out the £70 was not incurred and an officer from Civil Enforcement or DEAL were to state in court that it were, then this would be perjury. However, as nobody from the claimant's side seem to ever turn up at an actual hearing, The Prankster accepts that perjury may not have occurred.

The Prankster notes that charges such as 'drafting of witness statement', 'general file attendance' and 'preparation for hearing' are simply not applicable in the small claims court and no judge would award these except in cases of unreasonable behaviour.

The Prankster also notes that travel costs, while allowable, have to be incurred. As the claimants do not ever turn up in court, these appear to be totally fictional. In the few cases where they send a solicitor or barrister in their place, the courts generally take the view that local solicitors/barristers are available to all courts and so travel costs would need to be justified.

This therefore appears to be an attempt to bully defendants who have little knowledge of the legal system into settling the case by appearing to escalate costs.

The Prankster wonders when this flagrant abuse of the court system will stop.

It appears that in the ongoing criminal case against Civil Enforcement Limited, both Ashley Cohen and Gary Wayne were named in open court and have had court papers sent to them. The Prankster does not know in what context but it does now appear feasible they are 'controlling minds' of CEL, DEAL, or both.

The Prankster therefore calls on both of them to either admit whether they are foolish enough to pay somebody £70 to draft identical witness statements time after time, or to admit they were lying, and these costs were not actually incurred.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

Beavis result out? BPA issue press release welcoming Court of Appeal decision

The British Parking Association have issued the following press release regarding the Beavis case.

The British Parking Association (BPA) welcomes the Court of Appeal decision which provided much needed clarity on the issue of private parking charges. The judgement sets a precedent as it now becomes case law and will be referred to by other Courts in matters of a similar nature.

One aspect of the BPA’s work is self-regulating the management of parking on private land. We have been collaborating with Government on behalf of the entire parking sector and in the interests of consumers since 2007 when we launched our Approved Operators Scheme (AOS) which became the model for Accredited Trade Associations (ATA).

Patrick Troy, Chief Executive of the BPA said: “Clarity is good, but what would be better is a single standard setting body with an independent scrutiny board, which will deliver a single code of practice and a single independent appeals service for consumers. The BPA supports competition but not at the expense of standards, which encourages a race to the bottom, or in confusing the motorist by offering different appeals services of varying quality.

By establishing POPLA in 2012, by agreement with Government, the BPA led the way in delivering independent redress for the consumer. The Government is confusing matters by allowing proliferation of standard setting and appeals bodies.

The BPA recently appointed The Ombudsman Services to succeed London Councils as the service provider for POPLA from 1st October 2015. The Independent Scrutiny Board for Parking Appeals (ISPA) will continue to scrutinise POPLA to ensure that the service they deliver continues to be independent and be seen to be independent. Since POPLA’s launch by the BPA on October 1st 2012, over 60,000 appeals have been considered. There has not been one instance where a BPA operator has refused to accept a POPLA decision.

[Patrick Troy, continued: “We are calling on Government to act now and do the right thing for motorists and the entire parking sector. Continuing with multiple codes of practice, multiple appeal services, and variable auditing and sanctions regimes is unfair and confusing for motorists and businesses alike.”]

Prankster Note

Although the press release seems to imply the BPA know the decision on the Beavis case, it provides no useful information. On the other hand, with Patrick Troy involved, that might just be par for the course.

The other alternative is that someone pressed the release button too early.

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster

ANPR Ltd no longer members of the BPA AOS

ANPR Ltd are no longer appearing on the list of approved AOS Members

This may be because they have jumped ship to the IPC - but so far they are not on the list there.

The other options are that they have resigned or been suspended.

If they have resigned then their ability to get keeper data from the DVLA will be severely limited. They can try the 'Proserve' model, but this is currently under judicial review.

The Prankster has helped several motorists charged by ANPR Ltd who complained of various infractions, such as

• ghost tickets (tickets which are claimed issued to the driver, but which are not found on the windscreen)
• rude and aggressive phone calls with Pat Crossley
• pursuit of the keeper when the driver has already been identified, leading to charges from hire companies
• pursuit of an obviously wrong vehicle (wrong colour and make)

Happy Parking

The Parking Prankster