DVLA compensate for their incompetence

Here is an email which Mr Mustard received at the beginning of January from a lady who we will call Ms B.

I hope you’re well!

You’ve been recommended to me by lots of people who have found themselves battling PCNs in Barnet, thank you for all you do! My situation isn’t council but rather DVLA and debt recovery related, I’m a Barnet resident though so I’m hoping you’ll be able and willing to help me too.

So, we’ve just scraped together £426.50 of a £618 fine so that Marston Recovery would remove their clamp from my car. We’re not well off so that’s completely cleaned us out and has made the next few months really precarious for our family. It’s also pretty scary to be bullied out of a large sum of money in the street like that, especially at the moment when work is so unreliable.

We must now appeal via court so that we will hopefully be refunded some of that sum, or at the very least not have to pay the remaining £191.50.

The original fine was for a Dartford crossing toll charge back in August 2021 - my partner and I had a miscommunication as to who had paid, and in the end neither of us did. We would have received a penalty notice a few days later for this error, discovered the miscommunication and paid the fine, but we received no letter and had no idea there was any fine to pay. Now it has snowballed and is about 3 times as much as the original fine.

The penalty notice letters were going to our old address because when we moved house in May earlier that year, the DVLA had lost my V5 form with the updated address. All of the letters regarding the fine, and presumably subsequent court summonses were sent to the old address. The DVLA only finally admitted they lost my V5 form in November and updated my details in December!

I believe I am accountable solely for the fine of failing to pay the toll charge. So far no one has supplied me with any information of the breakdown of fines, or what to do next. Informally, over the phone, the bailiff said I had until February to appeal, but supplied no information as to who to contact. I’ve tried to get through to the DVLA, Marston Recovery office, and the Citizens Advice Bureau by phone but I’ve just been on hold for hours & the bailiff told me not to bother with email as it could take weeks to respond! Obviously I don’t have any of the letters with contact info which were meant to reach me, I really have no idea what to do.

I do have the Royal Mail certificate of posting with the Special Delivery tracking number from when I posted my V5 form with the updated address to DVLA, and the confirmation of delivery back in May. Additionally, there is an email response to me chasing up my V5 form in July - here they tell me the application may take longer than usual. They didn’t respond at all to a subsequent message I sent them through their contact centre, and I finally got through to someone via phone in November who confirmed they’d lost my details and then arranged for a “no fee V62” to be emailed to me so I could start the whole process again at no extra charge. I have a case number for these communications, if that helps to prove I did everything necessary to be contactable.

I’d really appreciate any guidance you could offer as to who to contact, if I need a solicitor, how to get hold of a copy of these letters or any information about the amounts I am being charged, and if you think I will be able to contest this at all.

Thanks in advance!

Mr Mustard worked out a strategy which he emailed to Ms B.

I plan three different approaches:

1 - file two lots of form TE7/9 to the TEC. This freezes the bailiff action whilst the application is thought about, for at least 2 weeks. Dart Charge can object to your application.

2 - make a subject access request to see what happened to the documents sent to your old address. Do you know who lives there now and can you ask them if they sent post for you back? Did you pay for mail forwarding and if so please provide a copy of it? I will need a recent utility bill and a copy of your driving licence or passport to do that.

3 - make out of time representations to Dart Charge. They like to reject them but should consider them out of time if there is a good reason why you are late, which there is.

Having decided on a strategy Mr Mustard was about to go cycling for a week (in February, it was great) and so he passed the problem on to a retired lawyer (Mr L) who now works pro bono and who is hoovering up every bit of knowledge that Mr Mustard has spent 12 years acquiring. Time is of the essence in this sort of case so having someone at their desk and not on a bicycle was advantageous.

78 emails later, the problem was resolved.

After lots of digging it was established that the warrant, which the bailiff refused to produce until after they were paid, was defective as it still showed the old address, typically bad bailiff behaviour. Dart Charge agreed to accept £3.50 for each crossing and cancel everything else. The bailiff had to refund the £426.50 - crime doesn't pay!

Mr L concluded that the real villain was DVLA so he went after them. Here is just one devastating paragraph from his complaint:

The letter clearly hit the mark as after investigating and seeing that they were completely at fault the DVLA came up with a reasonable offer of compensation.

As you can imagine, Ms B was delighted, was able to pay off the loan she had to take out in order to get the bailiff off her back and donate to charity.

End.