“it's easy to be Billy Big Bollocks when it's not your £100 at stake”
— r/AskUK, 24 October 2025

CPR 15.4(1) gives you 14 days from service of the particulars to file a defence.

A parking company has issued a county court claim. What to do, and by when

Nothing stored, no email asked for. The two dates are worked out inside this page and shown straight back to you.

A claim form is not a judgment, and it is not the end of the argument — it is the first time anyone independent has been obliged to look at the operator's evidence. But it is the one stage on this whole site with a hard, unforgiving clock: 14 days from service of the particulars of claim to file a defence, or 28 if you acknowledge service first. Miss it and the operator can ask for judgment without a hearing. The N180 that follows has its own clock, and we publish both with the rule numbers.

The first thing to check: how often the operator actually stood behind its case

Before you decide anything, it is worth knowing what the claimant's own record at the free appeal stage looks like — because the pattern is not what an operator's letters imply. Across POPLA's 1 October 2024 to 30 September 2025 year, the single largest outcome was not the operator winning. It was the operator declining to contest.

POPLA Annual Report — our parse, column sums matched to the printed totals · verified 03/08/2026

Put plainly: of 107,202 concluded POPLA cases, the charge fell away in 49,080 of them — 45.8% — and in 34,502 of those the operator simply did not put its case in. The same figures broken down by operator are here, so you can look up the company that is suing you and see its own decided-appeal record before you write a word.

Your deadlines, from the rules rather than from a forum

“The general rule is that the period for filing a defence is—(a) 14 days after service of the particulars of claim; or (b) if the defendant files an acknowledgment of service under Part 10, 28 days after service of the particulars of claim.”
— Civil Procedure Rules, Part 15 — Defence and Reply, rule 15.4(1) — checked 29/08/2026

Acknowledging service is a form, not an admission. It costs nothing, it is filed with the claim response pack, and it buys you the difference between 14 days and 28. If you are anywhere near the 14-day mark and still gathering evidence, that fortnight is the cheapest thing available to you.

Six years, and the thing that resets them

“An action founded on simple contract shall not be brought after the expiration of six years from the date on which the cause of action accrued.”
— Limitation Act 1980, section 5 (actions founded on simple contract), section 5 — checked 29/08/2026

A private parking charge is pleaded as a simple contract debt, so section 5 is the ceiling: six years from the date the cause of action accrued — in practice, the date of the parking event. A claim issued after that is open to a limitation defence.

“where any right of action has accrued to recover any debt or other liquidated pecuniary claim … and the person liable or accountable for the claim acknowledges the claim or makes any payment in respect of it the right shall be treated as having accrued on and not before the date of the acknowledgment or payment.”
— Limitation Act 1980, section 5 (actions founded on simple contract), section 29(5) — checked 29/08/2026

Which track, and what it costs you to lose

A parking claim is normally worth well under the small claims threshold, so it goes to the small claims track — and that is the single most important thing about the financial risk.

“The small claims track is the normal track for any claim which has a value of not more than £10,000.”
— Civil Procedure Rules, Part 26 — Case Management, Preliminary Stage, rule 26.9(4) — checked 29/08/2026

“The court may not order a party to pay a sum to another party in respect of that other party's costs, fees and expenses”
— Civil Procedure Rules, Part 27 — The Small Claims Track, rule 27.14 — checked 29/08/2026

On the small claims track the court generally cannot order you to pay the other side's legal costs. The exceptions are narrow and fixed — the court fee, limited travel and loss-of-earnings allowances, and capped expert fees. That is why a small claims parking hearing is not the financial catastrophe the debt-recovery letters imply, and why defending is usually cheaper than the letters suggest. It is not free of risk: lose, and you owe the charge, the claimant's court fee and its fixed costs.

The check the letters leave out: was the notice itself in time?

Keeper liability for a private parking charge only exists because Schedule 4 of the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 creates it, and Schedule 4 creates it only if the operator hit its own deadlines. If the notice to the keeper was served outside the statutory window, liability never transferred to the keeper at all — whatever happened at the appeal stage afterwards.

“The relevant period for the purposes of sub-paragraph (4) is the period of 14 days beginning with the day after that on which the specified period of parking ended.”
— Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4 (keeper liability for private parking charges), paragraph 9(5) — checked 27/08/2026

“The relevant period for the purposes of sub-paragraph (4) is the period of 28 days following the period of 28 days beginning with the day after that on which the notice to driver was given.”
— Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4 (keeper liability for private parking charges), paragraph 8(5) — checked 27/08/2026

Two windows, two different situations. Camera-only, no ticket on the windscreen: the notice to keeper must be delivered within 14 days beginning the day after the parking ended. Windscreen ticket first: the follow-up notice to keeper may not be given until day 29 and must be given by day 56. Get the dates off your own paperwork and check them:

Notice date in, the statutory window out, with the clause it comes from. Nothing stored, no signup.

What to do this week, in order

1. Find the service date. Everything on this page counts from it. It is on the claim form, not on the envelope.
2. File the acknowledgment of service if the 14 days are tight. It converts your deadline to 28 days.
3. Read the particulars of claim properly. Note the claimant's name, the amount, the date of the alleged contravention and the car park. A claim that does not say what contract you are alleged to have breached, and how, is a claim you can say so about.
4. Check the POFA dates above. A notice served out of time is a defence in itself on keeper liability.
5. Look up the claimant's POPLA record on the operator league table.
6. File the defence in the window. A defence filed on time and thin beats a perfect one filed late.
7. Return the N180 when it arrives, then prepare your documents for the 14-day rule.

A judgment has already been entered — what is still open

Two things get asked at this stage more than anything else, in almost the same words every time. “I never got any letters — the post where I live is a mess.” And “I panicked and paid it the day it arrived. Now what?” Neither is a dead end. Neither is a certainty either. Two separate things are still live, and it helps to keep them apart: whether the judgment itself can be cancelled, and what the public register shows. They are different questions with different answers.

1. Asking the court to cancel the judgment (“setting it aside”)

Cancelling a judgment is a real, named route rather than a favour. GOV.UK puts the two everyday situations like this:

“If you do not owe the money, you can ask the court to cancel the county court judgment (CCJ) or high court judgment.”
— County court judgments for debt: Cancel (set aside) a judgment — checked 31/08/2026

“You can apply for the judgment to be cancelled if you did not receive, or did not respond to, the original claim from the court.”
— County court judgments for debt: Cancel (set aside) a judgment — checked 31/08/2026

The rules underneath that guidance are in Part 13 of the Civil Procedure Rules, and they split into a must and a may. The must is narrow — it is about the judgment having been entered when the conditions for entering it were not met:

“The court must set aside a judgment entered under Part 12 if judgment was wrongly entered because— (a) in the case of a judgment in default of an acknowledgment of service, any of the conditions in rule 12.3(1) and 12.3(3) was not satisfied; (b) in the case of a judgment in default of a defence, any of the conditions in rule 12.3(2) and 12.3(3) was not satisfied; or (c) the whole of the claim was satisfied before judgment was entered.”
— Civil Procedure Rules, Part 13 — Setting Aside or Varying Default Judgment, rule 13.2 — checked 31/08/2026

Everything else falls under the may, which is a discretion the court exercises rather than a box you tick:

“In any other case, the court may set aside or vary a judgment entered under Part 12 if — (a) the defendant has a real prospect of successfully defending the claim; or (b) it appears to the court that there is some other good reason why — (i) the judgment should be set aside or varied; or (ii) the defendant should be allowed to defend the claim.”
— Civil Procedure Rules, Part 13 — Setting Aside or Varying Default Judgment, rule 13.3(1) — checked 31/08/2026

“In considering whether to set aside or vary a judgment entered under Part 12, the matters to which the court must have regard include whether the person seeking to set aside the judgment made an application to do so promptly.”
— Civil Procedure Rules, Part 13 — Setting Aside or Varying Default Judgment, rule 13.3(2) — checked 31/08/2026

2. The form, and what it costs

GOV.UK names one form for this — the general application notice, N244 — and states the fee:

“Use the N244 form to ask a court to set aside or vary a judgment or suspend an enforcement process.”
— Make an application to a court (application notice): Form N244 — checked 31/08/2026

“fill in the application notice (N244)”
— County court judgments for debt: Cancel (set aside) a judgment — checked 31/08/2026

“You may have to pay a court fee of £321.”
— County court judgments for debt: Cancel (set aside) a judgment — checked 31/08/2026

£321 is more than the £100 cap the Code sets for a parking charge. That is a real part of the decision rather than a footnote, and it is exactly the sort of thing worth talking through with a free adviser before you file — not after.

The fee is not always the end of it. GOV.UK runs a Help with Fees scheme (form EX160): on a low income, with limited savings, or on certain benefits, some or all of a court fee can be waived — and you can apply online at the same time as the application itself, before paying anything. The benefits the page names:

“income-based Jobseeker's Allowance (JSA), income-related Employment and Support Allowance (ESA), Income Support, Universal Credit (and you earn less than £6,000 a year), Pension Credit (Guarantee Credit)”
— Get help with court and tribunal fees — checked 31/08/2026

Check the scheme before you let the fee decide for you.

3. What paying does, and does not do, to the register

Paying and setting aside are not the same move. Paying does not delete a judgment that has been entered; it changes what someone searching the public register sees, and there is one short window where it changes it completely. GOV.UK states the three positions:

“If you get a county court judgment (CCJ) or a high court judgment, it will stay on the Register of Judgments, Orders and Fines for 6 years.”
— County court judgments for debt: CCJs and your credit rating, GOV.UK — read at source 30/08/2026

“If you pay the full amount within one month, you can get the judgment removed from the register.”
— County court judgments for debt: CCJs and your credit rating, GOV.UK — read at source 30/08/2026

“If you pay after one month, you can get the record of the judgment marked as 'satisfied' in the register. It will stay on the register for 6 years but people searching the register will see that you've paid.”
— County court judgments for debt: CCJs and your credit rating, GOV.UK — read at source 30/08/2026

Neither removal nor the “satisfied” marking happens on its own. GOV.UK's instruction on the same page is plain: “Write to the court to say you've paid. You'll need to send proof of payment from the person or business you owed money to.” For the certificate itself, GOV.UK says to apply in writing or by sending form N443 to the court dealing with the case, with the fee as stated on the form itself. So if you did pay the moment the letter landed, that instinct may have put you inside the one-month window — but only if you now ask. The whole credit-file chain, from first letter to judgment, is set out here.

Common questions

The rest of the free tools

Nothing here asks for an email address, and nothing here is a trial.

A council or TfL PCN instead? Different law, different clock, and the council's own free routes are on each page: Westminster · Lambeth · Camden · Islington · TfL · every council page.

Already had a letter from a debt firm? A debt-recovery letter is not a court claim and a court claim is not a judgment — three different things on three different clocks: DCBL · DCB Legal · what each letter actually is.

That is everything the free route gives you, and it is enough to do this yourself tonight. If you would rather read a finished letter than face a blank page: yours is free, on screen and as a download. No payment, no account, no email address.

The one thing on this site you can pay for is one operator’s full POPLA record, £20 once: three years of that company’s appendix rows, the grounds and the clause of its own rulebook that answers each one, its own published route and your clock. See what is in it, free. You never need it to appeal.

Written and checked by Andrew at Axion Labs. Published Thu, 20 August 2026 · Last checked Wed, 9 September 2026. If a figure on this page is wrong, write to hello@getaxionlabs.com and I will fix it and say so here.

Sources named above: POPLA Annual Report - Appendix (Parking on Private Land Appeals) · Protection of Freedoms Act 2012, Schedule 4