DVLA offering me an out of court settlement.. for £491?!!!

birduk

My theory. Car was SORNed. Car was 'accidently' left on the public road with no tax disc. Car was clamped. Car was THEN taxed and fine paid for clamp. DVLA are now pursuing the OP for the time when the car was SORNed and on a public road. They are offering a settlement of £491 for the OP to pay them for this fine.

Whether or not it was an 'accident', you put a car on the public road that you had SORNed. So yes, you deserve to be fined for it. How much is up to them/you. I have no idea. You made the mistake, but the clue is in the name- statutory off road notification, keep it off the road. It is not a 'I don't have the money to pay the road tax right now' declaration.

atrixblue.-MFR-.

birduk wrote: »

My theory. Car was SORNed. Car was 'accidently' left on the public road with no tax disc. Car was clamped. Car was THEN taxed and fine paid for clamp. DVLA are now pursuing the OP for the time when the car was SORNed and on a public road. They are offering a settlement of £491 for the OP to pay them for this fine.

Whether or not it was an 'accident', you put a car on the public road that you had SORNed. So yes, you deserve to be fined for it. How much is up to them/you. I have no idea. You made the mistake, but the clue is in the name- statutory off road notification, keep it off the road. It is not a 'I don't have the money to pay the road tax right now' declaration.

they would have to prove this amount of costs in court,

pstuart

Is this yet another newbie winding the armchair theorists up!

tomyblu

birduk, the first statement you got spot on, now it makes sense why it's so much, the car was SORN'd for over a year.. But was actually only illegally on the road for about a week, the week after it was MOT'd.

I was fine financially at the time, had it insured and getting round to the tax, my SORN location was only a few minutes walk away, but had it outside my house while I tried to get it running again.. BIG MISTAKE as we now see!

I hope that atrixblue is right, I don't have any way of proving it was in it's SORN location until the MOT, but they can't prove it wasn't until the date it was seen?

thelawnet

tomyblu wrote: »

birduk, the first statement you got spot on, now it makes sense why it's so much, the car was SORN'd for over a year.. But was actually only illegally on the road for about a week, the week after it was MOT'd.

I was fine financially at the time, had it insured and getting round to the tax, my SORN location was only a few minutes walk away, but had it outside my house while I tried to get it running again.. BIG MISTAKE as we now see!

I hope that atrixblue is right, I don't have any way of proving it was in it's SORN location until the MOT, but they can't prove it wasn't until the date it was seen?

Why should anyone believe you? You were caught breaking the law, I think the boot's on the other foot now - your credibility is zero having knowlingly SORNed and then put the car on the road.

tomyblu

Could we restrict this to helpful advice please? I know the mistake I've made and I'm just trying to not get fined a substantial amount more than I should.

I had a SORN'd car on the side of the road (it's never been illegally driven) for a week; £591 in total fines, more than the cars worth does not sound like a fair fine.

Hammyman

boyse7en wrote: »

It sounds like you are being fined twice for the same offence - failure to display a tax disc and failure to declare SORN.

I can't see how you can be fined for both.

They are two seperate offences.

The first is for not displaying a tax disc and having a car on the road untaxed and this has nothing to do with SORN.

The second is for filing a false SORN statement declaring the car was off the road which it wasn't, was it? SORN = Statutory Off Road Notification.

So yes, you can be done for both if you've submitted a SORN.

And yes it is fair. I, along with millions of other people pay our road tax to keep our vehicles on the road so what makes you special?

You cannot have a car with a SORN notice on it on the road, no matter whether it is driven or not, unless it is on the way to or from a pre-booked MOT. You need a tax disc to "park" a car on the road. It could be quite rightly argued that you submitted a SORN notice so you wouldn't get a fine for not taxing the car as long as you didn't get caught - many people use this tack to try and get out of taxing a car.

There is absolutely no point fighting it. You broke the law and were caught bang to rights. DVLA don't have to prove anything as your car was seen parked on the road with a SORN notification in place and no tax disc. Game over.

Hammyman

Strider590 wrote: »

DVLA for ya

No, someonw who thought SORN notice would get him out of a fine for no road tax....

If he'd not filed the SORN, he'd have only got done for no tax.

Badger_Lady

tomyblu wrote:

birduk, the first statement you got spot on, now it makes sense why it's so much, the car was SORN'd for over a year.. But was actually only illegally on the road for about a week, the week after it was MOT'd.

How did you get it MOT'd whilst SORN'd??? Sorry, there's a real communication issue in these posts!

Hammyman

Badger_Lady wrote: »

How did you get it MOT'd whilst SORN'd??? Sorry, there's a real communication issue in these posts!

Quite easy. Insure car, book it for MOT. You can drive an untaxed and SORN'd car to and from a pre-booked MOT.