no car tax/no logbook

dannyjebb

Hi

Wondering if someone can help with this.

Last Monday my wife realised she never received a log book after applying for a new one last year. She was only looking for it cause we have moved house so she was sending it off to get address changed. She then realised her tax ran out in June and so went to work that day and went to the post office to arrange a new logbook and to tax the car.

She did all the stuff at the post office and they told her there was a problem and they couldn't tax it they would need to ring the DVLA. SO she rang them and had the same issue, was told she would need to fill in a v62 form and a v10 form for logbook and tax and it could take 4 weeks!!!!

Unbelievably after driving her car for 2 months with no tax, the day she went to tax it she returned to her car and had a clamp on with a ticket saying no tax.....She rang and paid the fine and they unclamped it and she drove home and hasnt used it since.

So question number 1 is, she had a £260 fine for the clamping (£160 refundable if she provided proof the car was taxed within 15 days) she then today got a letter from the DVLA saying the car was seen on the road (Same day same road as it was clamped on) and another £30 fine! Surely they cant fine you twice for the same offence?

The 2nd and more concerning question is, after lengthy conversations with the DVLA to find out why she couldn't tax the car, it turns out they have her name spelt wrong on their system! and so when trying to tax it at the post office there was an error cause the names didn't match Correct name is Heald, DVLA have the name as Head!!! Firstly I am sure this is a breach of principle 4 of the data protection act? Someone has obviously mispelt her name when putting in her details initially. So now because of this error on their behalf she has had no car for nearly 2 weeks, has had a fine of £260 and now has another fine of £30!

To make things even worse she wrote a complaint to the DVLA and they sent a reply and still had her name spelt wrong!!

Please could someone advise if indeed the DVLA have breached data protection? Also do the DVLA need to provide proof of postage as we are certain she never received her log book last year, but its the kind of thing you don't notice until you need it.

We are aware she was driving without tax for a few months (Unkowingly) so the fine isn't really the issue. Although her car has less than 99g/km emissions so there is actually no tax to pay on the car. Our main issue is she has been without a car for 2 weeks meaning we have had to make alternate arrangements for our daughter after nursery and this is due to an error on their part.

Many thanks for any help and advice.

DUTR

dannyjebb wrote: »

Hi

Wondering if someone can help with this.

Last Monday my wife realised she never received a log book after applying for a new one last year. She was only looking for it cause we have moved house so she was sending it off to get address changed. She then realised her tax ran out in June and so went to work that day and went to the post office to arrange a new logbook and to tax the car.

She did all the stuff at the post office and they told her there was a problem and they couldn't tax it they would need to ring the DVLA. SO she rang them and had the same issue, was told she would need to fill in a v62 form and a v10 form for logbook and tax and it could take 4 weeks!!!!

Unbelievably after driving her car for 2 months with no tax, the day she went to tax it she returned to her car and had a clamp on with a ticket saying no tax.....She rang and paid the fine and they unclamped it and she drove home and hasnt used it since.

So question number 1 is, she had a £260 fine for the clamping (£160 refundable if she provided proof the car was taxed within 15 days) she then today got a letter from the DVLA saying the car was seen on the road (Same day same road as it was clamped on) and another £30 fine! Surely they cant fine you twice for the same offence?

The 2nd and more concerning question is, after lengthy conversations with the DVLA to find out why she couldn't tax the car, it turns out they have her name spelt wrong on their system! and so when trying to tax it at the post office there was an error cause the names didn't match Correct name is Heald, DVLA have the name as Head!!! Firstly I am sure this is a breach of principle 4 of the data protection act? Someone has obviously mispelt her name when putting in her details initially. So now because of this error on their behalf she has had no car for nearly 2 weeks, has had a fine of £260 and now has another fine of £30!

To make things even worse she wrote a complaint to the DVLA and they sent a reply and still had her name spelt wrong!!

Please could someone advise if indeed the DVLA have breached data protection? Also do the DVLA need to provide proof of postage as we are certain she never received her log book last year, but its the kind of thing you don't notice until you need it.

We are aware she was driving without tax for a few months (Unkowingly) so the fine isn't really the issue. Although her car has less than 99g/km emissions so there is actually no tax to pay on the car. Our main issue is she has been without a car for 2 weeks meaning we have had to make alternate arrangements for our daughter after nursery and this is due to an error on their part.

Many thanks for any help and advice.

I don't know, I'm not sure why you don't keep the vehicle documents with the other important documents you need in a safe and locatable place?

Rover_Driver

Is the £30 an out of court settlement offer for the offence of using or keeping an unlicensed vehicle on a public road?

dannyjebb

DUTR wrote: »

I don't know, I'm not sure why you don't keep the vehicle documents with the other important documents you need in a safe and locatable place?

Thanks for your comment, in reply I'm not sure why you're spending your Friday night typing pointless replies on here. So I guess we're both confused

dannyjebb

Rover_Driver wrote: »

Is the £30 an out of court settlement offer for the offence of using or keeping an unlicensed vehicle on a public road?

Yes that sounds about right? Isnt this what the £260 fine was for?

Rover_Driver

dannyjebb wrote: »

Yes that sounds about right? Isnt this what the £260 fine was for?

The £260 was the clamping fee (part refunded if a vehicle licence is taken out), the £30 would be an out of court settlement offer for the offence. Two different matters.

spiro

The problem in part stems for your wife not realsing she didn't get the log book over a year ago (you don't say why she sent it off). If she had chased then, she would hopefully have spotted the error, got it corrected and you would have been able to tax it on time. In any dealings with the DVLA you need to ensure they process it.

dannyjebb

spiro wrote: »

The problem in part stems for your wife not realsing she didn't get the log book over a year ago (you don't say why she sent it off). If she had chased then, she would hopefully have spotted the error, got it corrected and you would have been able to tax it on time. In any dealings with the DVLA you need to ensure they process it.

Thanks, She sent it off for address change. The problem could of been when Ford initially transferred ownership to her 4 years ago, they made the error and she never realised. Although she is quite keen on her name being spelt right as it's a common error missing the 'l' out

We have sent a complaint so I am hoping they have to keep paperwork so we can find out where the fault was initially with.

TonyMMM

Data Protection won't come into it - forget that as an angle of complaint. As you say it may have been a dealer mistake when the car was first registered .....as long as DVLA correct the error when they are made aware they will have no DPA issue at all.

The problem seems to be mainly hers for not not chasing up the missing logbook, and definitely for not knowing when the tax ran out.

But - DVLA do have some discretion in the penalties applied so worth chasing.

takman

Also in future you should use the online service to change address / change keepers etc. It much more efficient and you get an email confirmation that it has been changed.

You should also set a reminder for 4 weeks after to check you have received the log book so you can chase it up if you don't.

Also I have a 12 month Direct Debit setup for my Vehicle Tax and I get an email each year to remind me it's being taken out, so even if I didn't do anything it would automatically renew.
So you should see if you can set it up to automatically renew (But I've never tried it on a car with a zero rate of tax)

dannyjebb

TonyMMM wrote: »

Data Protection won't come into it - forget that as an angle of complaint. As you say it may have been a dealer mistake when the car was first registered .....as long as DVLA correct the error when they are made aware they will have no DPA issue at all.

The problem seems to be mainly hers for not not chasing up the missing logbook, and definitely for not knowing when the tax ran out.

But - DVLA do have some discretion in the penalties applied so worth chasing.

So if Ford had put the correct name on, and it's a typing error at their end, I'm pretty sure that's a breach of data protection?

I agree she should have noticed her log book hadn't arrived and also she should know when tax runs out, she presumed it was the same time as mot so got the mot done then realised she had no logbook to tax the car. She has paid her fine, paid for a new logbook and now cause of dvla error she had been without a car for 2 weeks