Legal Dispute resolution hearings Are dispute resolution hearings a more effective method for resolving parking claims? Paul Luukas, head of litigation at SCS Law, explains B efore the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in December 2019, the average timespan for a civil small claim to reach a hearing was 36.1 weeks. By September 2020, the average timespan was 51.9 weeks. The latest available figure is from November 2020 and the period remains stubbornly long, at 50.8 weeks. Parking News readers may be aware that, as consultations on the Parking Code of Practice have got under way, there have been a number of voices calling for a different forum in which to resolve parking disputes, rather than via the small claims track of the county court. There are numerous reasons for this, including: The inordinately long wait before the claim reaches a hearing to be decided The inherently high bar in persuading the court that the defendant has behaved unreasonably, which would expose them to additional costs beyond nominal fixed costs The potential disproportionality in litigating lower-value claims, when measured against the cost of litigation and the amount of time required to be expended on it Judges applying a particularly onerous burden of proof on the parking company, especially in light of the rise in personal indebtedness during the pandemic and its economic impact on individuals The risk of defendants, usually litigants in person, causing an adjournment of the hearing by producing documents not previously filed at court or served on the claimant, or requesting an adjournment at very short notice Defendants producing boilerplate defences or witness statements that raise a number of points (often irrelevant) and require a thorough Reply to Defence in order to address each of them The prevalence of websites and online forums that discuss tactics for disputing parking charge notices at small claims hearings. Remote hearings In a bid to dispose of a significant number of cases and deal with the backlog of small claims that have been issued, numerous courts across the jurisdiction have been holding dispute resolution hearings (DRHs). These are particularly prominent in the Midlands, at venues such as the county courts in Birmingham, Stafford, and Leicester. DRHs are held remotely, via telephone. The case is simultaneously allocated to the small claims track and scheduled for a DRH, which has a time estimate of 30 minutes. The court gives directions obliging each party to send to the court, and to the other party, all documents (including witness statements) on which they intend to rely. This is almost invariably phrased in mandatory terms, with a warning that the court may (or will) refuse to entertain any documents not filed/ served before the hearing. A DRH is akin to a preliminary hearing on the small claims track. The court has the power to treat the DRH as the final hearing of the claim, under CPR 27.6.* In a bid to dispose of a significant number of cases and deal with the backlog of small claims, numerous courts have been holding dispute resolution hearings 22 britishparking.co.uk PN Mar 2021 pp22-23 Legal.indd 22 22/02/2021 14:05