Paid DVLA fee for clamp, now got a letter for separate fine

katie84

Hi everyone.
I am a part time motor trader, and bought a van to sell to a friend. Said friend then decided he didn't want it, and I had to keep the van near my house. Now, I KNOW I am at fault, I parked the van on the road without it being taxed. Long story short, a neighbour reported us.

At 5pm on the 17th December, I drove past and saw the van had been clamped, with a DVLA flyer on. The leaflet explained there was a £100 release fee, and I also had to produce a valid tax disk. The following morning at 9am, I taxed the vehicle, and paid a £100 release fee to have the clamp removed.

Fast forward to earlier this week, I received a letter from the DVLA, stating that said van was seen and reported at 15.59 on 17/12/2013, as being kept on a road whilst unlicensed. "This remains an offence even if the vehicle is subsequently licensed. This is separate to the fees paid to the Agency's wheel-clamping contractors who clamped/impounded the vehicle."

I now need to fill in a form giving information as to who was keeping the vehicle at the said time. "Failure to provide this information is an offence and a court may impose a maximum fine of £1000, if you do not supply the information requested."

There is no indication on the letter as to how much the fine will be. There was no reference when the van was clamped, that the £100 release fee wasn't the end of the story. Apparently, the clamp wasn't the full punishment. I called 2 DVLA numbers, to be told that no one can explain anything about the situation to me, nor help me with my query whatsoever. "You have 2 options, pay the fine, or appeal." When I asked how much the fine would be, no one knew, and I just had the previous sentence repeated to me.

Can someone explain my rights to me please? Or someone who has gone through this themselves. I was punished by the clamp. I paid £100 to have it released. How on Earth am I know being asked for more money?

Thank you.

fivetide

If i get this right - you are now being pursued for the back tax.

You were clamped so the vehicle couldn't be moved as it wasn't displaying a valid tax disc.

To get that taken off you needed to pay the fee and produce a valid disc. Maybe the disc had slipped off the screen for example. If that had been the case you wouldn't have any further issues. As it was you had to buy a new disc to show them the vehicle was taxed.

However, not displaying and not having tax are two seperate things so while the first one dealt with when you bought the tax and paid the release fee, the other is still being sorted hence the fine.

I think they can do you right back to when the vehicle was last taxed.

It is a bit difficult to get exactly what you have/haven't been done for initially from your post but that's a general outline.

It happened to a friend of mine, classic car, forgot to put tax on it when he went out in the sun with it. Got a £80 fine from a traffic warden for "not displaying a valid tax disc" and then a further fine from the DVLA for using an untaxed vehicle.

hope that helps a bit. Does sound like you've been put in a hard place and you might be able to use the sale date to limit how far back they look with the fine (if it is months between you getting the new disc bought and the old one expiring)

Bantex_2

Fine can be up to £1000 plus payment of backtax.

Quentin

They can't tell you the fine at this stage.

It will depend how the offence is dealt with.

(Court or fixed penalty)

Usually £80 fixed penalty plus arrears. Court max fine is £1000. No points though.

londonTiger

i guess a lot of people imagine that the declamping fee settles everything but that's really just the start.

If they have to tow the car away after being left clamped for a long time that leads to massive storage and removal fines. On the bright side - it didn't resort to that for the OP.

katie84

Thank you for the replies, everyone. We bought the van as an order for a friend of ours. We found it on ebay, advertised as being taxed until September 2014. We drove 2 hours to Somerset to be told that was a typo, and it was actually 31/09/2013, and that the vehicle was actually SORN'd. It was about 5/6pm, so we drove it back, and delivered it to our friend's house. This was on the 6th December.

At some point between the 6th and 17th December, our friend found out the van was too high to fit into his work garage, and he couldn't use it, so we got it back to sell on for him.

We had the van parked on our drive (we trade from home) and moved it down the road to make some room (Mistake #2). Got into a debate with a man who was complaining about where we parked it. Moved it a little further down the road, (Mistake #3) and returned at 5pm to find it had been clamped. We completed the yellow trader slip on the 6th December, surely they can't have us for back tax until September 2013?!

fivetide

Could be a good idea to visit the Pepipoo forums http://forums.pepipoo.com/index.php?showforum=5

As you might get more people who have been in this situation.

katie84

Thank you, I will do.

katie84

I've just thought, I have the ebay listing for the van with the tax date until 31/09/2014. Could I not argue (lie) that we drove back the vehicle as taxed, and only realised later that there was no disk? If we hadn't asked the salesman, we would never have known the van wasn't taxed. For all anyone knows, we could have been waiting for the dealership to send us the tax disk. Then we are only liable for not displaying a tax disk. I know it's lying, but we can't keep losing money.

forgotmyname

Might want to make sure your story is straight. You drove an untaxed vehicle back ....oops...

mad_rich

If that was a typo, I'll eat my hat. When did you buy the van from the owner in Somerset?

Assuming it was 6 December, it seems you have been lured in with a false promise of tax. No normal human being advertises a SORN'd car by telling you when the old tax disc expired! Check what else they've stitched you up on.

As to your original question - the clamp, and release fee wasn't your penalty. It was just a method of immobilising the car while they decide how to penalise you. Sounds harsh, but that's the situation. I would imagine you'd be liable to backdated tax from when you became the registered keeper.