A pensioner has been lumbered with parking fines totalling to £400 for a car he didn’t even own, but now he is determined to recoup his losses.
Last January, Merrick Clarke, 69, from Rugby, was shocked to see debt recover fines for parking tickets on his doorstep for a vehicle that didn’t even belong to him.
And to add further confusion, the tickets issued to a Peugeot at St Cross Hospital were for parking violations dated years prior in 2020 and 2021.
Initially Mr Clarke believed there had been a simple admin error, as he had not owned the car in question since September 2020.
But when he phoned debt recovery company DCBL, who were acting on behalf of Parking Eye, it soon dawned on him that his parking ‘nightmare’ wouldn’t end there.
Despite the retiree informing DCBL who the then registered owner of the car actually was, they continued to chase him for the enormous fine.
It is understood in most case a vehicle’s driver or owner is responsible for a parking charge notice (PCN) – however Mr Clarke was neither of these.
But DCBL eventually took him to small claims court and hitting him with a £325 parking fine as well as a county court judgement (CCJ) – which he had to pay extra to have removed.
Mr Clarke had informed DCBL that he was no longer the owner of the car, and had handed the details of the then registered owner, but the warnings only continued.
He told : ‘I told them immediately I wasn’t the owner of the car and they needed to chase down the guy that owns the car.’
As he was acquainted with the new vehicle owner via his daughter, he passed the tickets on thinking it would resolve the issue.
Unfortunately, Mr Clarke also no longer had the paperwork relating to the Peugeot and in the meantime contacted the DVLA to prove he was no longer the registered owner.
However there lengthy Covid-19 backlog would prove detrimental to the pensioner who was facing not only pressure but a looming court case with DCBL.
‘I got rid of all [the paperwork] because two years later you don’t expect to need it,’ he said: ‘You don’t expect really to be taken to court over a car that you don’t own.’
‘The tickets kept coming, and so I kept was phoning. It was getting ridiculous. Then I started getting serious letters saying, ‘We’re going to take you to court’.’
He also claimed to have asked DBCL to prove he was the owner, however they refused.
As the court case began to loom closer, Mr Clarke approached the debt recovery company and asked them how to bring the debacle to an end.
He said they told him he had to pay the fine, but he refused as it wasn’t his car – with the then-owner even going as far as trying to pay the PCN.
‘DCBL wouldn’t let him [the then owner] pay it because he wasn’t the person on their system that was supposed to be paying it.
‘So I formally wrote to them, I give you permission to pursue X person at Y address as the rightful owner of the car in question.’
But Mr Clarke found himself at a ‘stalemate’, with DCBL taking weeks to respond to emails as the court case date edged closer.
As he was living part-time in France, the 70-year-old wrote to the court explaining the situation at hand.
But without his presence or evidence from the DVLA, they ruled in the debt recovery firm’s favour issuing Mr Clarke with a £325 as well as a CCJ.
A CCJ is a court order to pay a debt or compensate someone, and it can in some cases impact your credit rating.
With no other option last April Mr Clarke eventually paid the fine as well as extra cost to have the CCJ removed from his record – a bill that totalled to around £400.
‘All they did was stalling tactics to get you to court, now I’d been handed this fine because I couldn’t attend court, and I couldn’t challenge it,’ he said
‘I’m nearly 70, I’ve never had a county court against me, and I don’t want one. I felt really strongly about this but I paid the fine.’
But it would only be months later that debt recovery letters linked to more tickets for the vehicle would land in his letterbox last November.
‘I was astonished,’ he said: ‘These were now from three years ago, and I kept telling them: ‘I’m not the owner’.’
Luckily by this point the DVLA had sent Mr Clarke with the much-needed proof that he hadn’t owned the car since 2020.
However the DCBL initially refuted the evidence, determined to take the pensioner to court over a parking ticket – which had occurred the day before the contravention for which he was fined around £325.
After many phone calls and a formal complaint, they formally apologised to Mr Clarke, acknowledging he was not the rightful owner. They also cancelled the outstanding ticket.
‘I said, well, that’s fine, but what about the £400 you’ve cost me stress that I’ve gone through? Because, you know this, the phone calls, so many emails…,’ he added.
The debt recovery company then relinquished responsibility saying that if he wanted his £400 back he would have to pursue the parking company – Parking Eye.
‘So I went at Parking Eye and they said, ‘It’s nothing to do with us deal with DCBL.’ You know the normal run around,’ he quipped.
has seen DVLA documentation stating that Mr Clarke disposed of the car on September 30, 2020.
However Parking Eye have said the details for the car were obtained via the DVLA database and also added that Mr Clarke had not appealed the tickets.
When someone sells a vehicle, the seller must inform DVLA of when it was sold and who it was sold to.
This ensures that DVLA records are accurate and that the person who sold the vehicle does not receive correspondence for a vehicle they no longer own.
It is also understood that Parking Eye sent letters for the PCNs on November 16 and November 25 of 2020, as well as January 2021 to Mr Clark’s registered address.
Now Mr Clarke on a mission to go the small claims court route in a bid to recoup his money.
‘If it was 60 quid it would be bad, but it’s nearly £400. What I get really frustrated about is there’s no way to fight these people,’ he said.
‘It’s a circle that you can’t, you know you can’t get out of, because they keep blaming each other
‘They shouldn’t be able to do this and they go after people that are having real monetary problems – it’s just not right.’
He added: ‘I still don’t know why they still had me on their system, because if they had gone to DVLA they would have have got the same ticket I received, showing that the car had been sold 2 months previously.’
A Parkingeye spokesperson said: ‘Parkingeye has partnered with the Hospital of St Cross in Rugby for many years to significantly improve how its car parks operate.
‘Two parking charges were issued on November 11th and 12th in 2020 due to the motorist not paying to park.
‘The vehicle owner details were secured through the DVLA which corresponded to Mr Clarke’s name and address at the time of both charges.
‘We would highlight it is a legal responsibility to ensure a vehicle’s details are up to date and registered to the correct address.
‘It is also unfortunate that there hasn’t been any clarity on the date when Mr Clarke updated the ownership details with the DVLA.
‘We issued four letters for each charge to the registered address advising on the parking charges however we received no payment or communication in relation to the ownership of the vehicle.
‘Parkingeye operates a BPA (British Parking Association) audited appeals process, which motorists can use to appeal their parking charge and highlight any mitigating circumstances.
‘Mr Clarke failed to use the formal appeals process to advise us and provide evidence that the ownership of the vehicle had changed. Due to not engaging with our process in any way the cases were escalated to debt recovery and the County Court.
‘Mr Clarke first got in touch with us in February this year, well over four years after the charges were issued to his address.
‘If he had used our appeals process and engaged with our successive rounds of correspondence in 2020, we would have been able to investigate and the cases could have been resolved for Mr Clarke.
‘However once it moves to debt recovery, he would need to engage with their process to provide any supporting evidence and resolve.’
has approached DCBL Legal for comment.