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As the forum has thankfully become a bit quieter just now due to the police winding down their non-critical (and from our viewpoint non-proven!) investigations due to the upcoming holidays it might be a good moment to recount my recent rather less frightening brush with legal procedures.
I returned home in August from a holiday in Scotland to find that the top section of my brick gate pier had been dislodged and the road surfaced dressed. I'm sorry to say that I did immediately come to a conclusion without any actual evidence but resisted the temptation to make an immediate accusation until a full investigation had taken place
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One of my neighbours, who regularly checks on my property when I am away, confirmed that the damage had occurred during the day of the resurfacing operations and my other neighbour mentioned that her gate had been ‘nudged’ by the chipping lorry (her driveway, like mine, exits onto the turning area at the bottom of our cul-de-sac, but her gate and posts are wooden so survived the nudge)
Armed with this information I politely put my case, illustrated with photos, to the Highways Agency of the local County Council as the commissioning authority for the work, initially via a telephone call, then finally culminating with a 14-day letter to the chief executive of the agency.
The Highways Agency’s response was to acknowledge my initial contacts with a promise to refer them but without mentioning my claim in any way; my later formal letters received no response at all
Halfway through this lengthy process I reluctantly gave in and repaired the pier myself so was able to formalize the damage claim through a personal invoice for time and materials spent repairing the pier and administering the claim, about £45 in total.
The Council obviously did refer my claim as I had two visits from representatives of the re-surfacing contractors: the first was the chargehand from the actual gang who smilingly suggested I might have backed into the post myself with my van on my return from holiday and was trying to get it repaired at their expense; and the second was an executive from the overall holding company (no identification as this forum can be viewed by anyone etc, etc, but a household name
) who arrived in a £25K company Jaguar to inform me that it could not possibly have been their operatives and my witnesses were ‘mistaken’ (fortunately my neighbour was also at home so was able to make her statement personally)
Of these two, the second visitor wound me up so much (though he did have the grace to realise that his visit actually cost his company much more than the amount I was claiming for) that I told him that I would sue for damages unless my claim was settled; hence the 14 day letter to the County Council.
Having made the threat I felt obliged to carry it through and was delighted to find that the cost of making an application online was £25 (for sub-£800 claims) rather than the £200/£300 I was expecting
My ten minutes work in filling in the web form and making the £25 on-line payment produced a veritable avalanche of web and hard copy notifications of summonses including, rather satisfying, a copy of the one for the Council which stated that no response was not an option for them
Perhaps unsurprisingly, within days I received a letter from the finance and compliance officer of the Council saying he had discussed the matter with the contractors who were prepared to settle my claim (incidentally the £25 court costs were automatically added on by the system) and was therefore pleased to enclose a cheque from them. On checking dates it was apparent that the payment was authorised on the day they received the court summons, so they probably concluded it was easier to pay me off than send a solicitor to Northampton CC to defend it.
This whole episode has both annoyed and satisfied me; quite obviously the Council and their contractors assumed that I would eventually give up and go away and so it was gratifying that, in this instance our much-maligned justice system actually came up trumps, in that it levelled the playing field between me and two multi-million pound organizations.
I returned home in August from a holiday in Scotland to find that the top section of my brick gate pier had been dislodged and the road surfaced dressed. I'm sorry to say that I did immediately come to a conclusion without any actual evidence but resisted the temptation to make an immediate accusation until a full investigation had taken place
.One of my neighbours, who regularly checks on my property when I am away, confirmed that the damage had occurred during the day of the resurfacing operations and my other neighbour mentioned that her gate had been ‘nudged’ by the chipping lorry (her driveway, like mine, exits onto the turning area at the bottom of our cul-de-sac, but her gate and posts are wooden so survived the nudge)
Armed with this information I politely put my case, illustrated with photos, to the Highways Agency of the local County Council as the commissioning authority for the work, initially via a telephone call, then finally culminating with a 14-day letter to the chief executive of the agency.
The Highways Agency’s response was to acknowledge my initial contacts with a promise to refer them but without mentioning my claim in any way; my later formal letters received no response at all
Halfway through this lengthy process I reluctantly gave in and repaired the pier myself so was able to formalize the damage claim through a personal invoice for time and materials spent repairing the pier and administering the claim, about £45 in total.
The Council obviously did refer my claim as I had two visits from representatives of the re-surfacing contractors: the first was the chargehand from the actual gang who smilingly suggested I might have backed into the post myself with my van on my return from holiday and was trying to get it repaired at their expense; and the second was an executive from the overall holding company (no identification as this forum can be viewed by anyone etc, etc, but a household name
) who arrived in a £25K company Jaguar to inform me that it could not possibly have been their operatives and my witnesses were ‘mistaken’ (fortunately my neighbour was also at home so was able to make her statement personally)Of these two, the second visitor wound me up so much (though he did have the grace to realise that his visit actually cost his company much more than the amount I was claiming for) that I told him that I would sue for damages unless my claim was settled; hence the 14 day letter to the County Council.
Having made the threat I felt obliged to carry it through and was delighted to find that the cost of making an application online was £25 (for sub-£800 claims) rather than the £200/£300 I was expecting
My ten minutes work in filling in the web form and making the £25 on-line payment produced a veritable avalanche of web and hard copy notifications of summonses including, rather satisfying, a copy of the one for the Council which stated that no response was not an option for themPerhaps unsurprisingly, within days I received a letter from the finance and compliance officer of the Council saying he had discussed the matter with the contractors who were prepared to settle my claim (incidentally the £25 court costs were automatically added on by the system) and was therefore pleased to enclose a cheque from them. On checking dates it was apparent that the payment was authorised on the day they received the court summons, so they probably concluded it was easier to pay me off than send a solicitor to Northampton CC to defend it.
This whole episode has both annoyed and satisfied me; quite obviously the Council and their contractors assumed that I would eventually give up and go away and so it was gratifying that, in this instance our much-maligned justice system actually came up trumps, in that it levelled the playing field between me and two multi-million pound organizations.
..... won't be the same in a couple of weeks - post Christmas and New Year's Eve parties 
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