My car has been seized from private land with a valid SORN.

bluebrix

My car has been impounded, it was on a private unadopted road with a valid SORN notice, where it has been for the past 10 months without issue.

I received a letter from the council that gave me 10 days notice that my car has been reported as abandoned and would be removed if I take no action. I immediately moved it to another location on the private road so that it at least is evident that it is not abandoned, and booked it in for it's MOT which it attended.

I’ve been in financial difficulties over the past several months and consequently declared my car SORN in March and left it on a private unadopted road behind my property where we all have access to our garages. The land is jointly owned by all freeholders. The road is unmaintained, no road surface and essentially a muddy track, most of which is impassable with vehicles due to it’s poor condition. It’s the only road in the area not covered by the local parking permit requirements (evidencing that it is unadopted), but I have a valid parking permit anyway.
After receiving the abandonment notice I responded to the letter and booked my car in for an MOT, but then unfortunately found that the only access road to the private road was closed for 5 days with the appropriate road signage and permissions attached to the lamp posts. I then took it for it’s MOT on the day the road closure ended.

It failed on some minor issues including an intermittent cylinder misfire, but nothing labelled as dangerous. The garage had insufficient knowledge to resolve the misfire but recommended another local garage. I dove my car back home from the MOT to the private road and booked in the work needed with the recommended garage. The earliest they could book me in was the first day after the xmas bank holidays, which was 8 days after the MOT took place.
On the morning I was taking it to the mechanic I found my car was gone and I reported it as stolen to the police. The next day I received a letter from the DVLA stating my car was taken and impounded the previous day. I now face a hefty fee in retrieving it from the pound, and have missed my MOT appointment.

Owing to the 7 day time limit in the letter of the impoundment, I essentially have only 2 working days to collect it before they permanently get rid of it, tomorrow the 30th and 31st, as the 7th working day is new year’s day, this 2 day weekend, and I lost a day due to the letter not arriving until the day after they took it. I have sent an email to my mechanic garages to request another MOT appointment at their earliest convenience, as I am legally unable to drive the car away from the pound without a valid MOT, but being a Sunday I will be lucky to get a response tomorrow at best.

None of this would have been an issue if the adjoining access road wasn’t closed to vehicles for 5 days, and in any case my car has been sized from a private unadopted road with a valid SORN in place.
The 7 day notice the DVLA have given me in their letter includes a weekend and a bank holiday in which they are shut, and further compounded by the xmas and new year holidays with no local garages open so I can even book a pre-arranged MOT to drive it out of the pound.

I feel that this seizure of my car has directly made it impossible for me to complete the MOT repairs and retest I was in the process of completing (all of which booked in with confirmation emails) and am concerned I will now never see my car again. My car is otherwise fully insured, wasn’t positioned dangerously or as an obstruction, and is most likely the result of a busybody neighbour with nothing better to do and managed to persuade the council is still abandoned even though it's been moved twice and I have abundant email and documentary evidence of it having gone to the garage for it's MOT in the mean time.

The pound detailed in their letter is a private company called “NSL”, When I select my area from the dropdown list on their website it refers me to the local council website, who themselves are not open again until after the deadline given in the letter. They are also adding a £24 per day charge at the pound even though they are not open and I can not collect my car from them.

Aside from all of these complicating factors that all of these dates and bank holidays are making the issue even more difficult to deal with, the fact remains that my car was seized from private land with a valid SORN.

Does anyone have any experience of what I might be able to do in the few days I have remaining to make my case to NSL when they open on the 2nd January that they should not have removed my car in the first place? I have expectations that they will simply tell me they are right and I’m wrong no matter what I say or they wouldn’t have taken my car in the first place.


Many thanks in advance to any advice given during a time most of us are trying to enjoy time off from stresses.

Scrapit

Are you sure it's a private road? Not all roads need to be maintained.

[Deleted User]

Even if it is private did you have permission from all of the owners, there's frequently more than one, to park there.

bluebrix

Yes, I am joint a freeholder of the private road, as are all of the properties along which the road spans behind our gardens. It is categorically a private road. The fact that it is unadopted is inconsequential. This process has been initiated by someone complaining that my car is abandoned. I responded to the council letter confirming that it was not abandoned, it's been seized anyway. It will take some time to request confirmation from the land registry of this fact, and I have previously questioned this myself and saw confirmatory land registry documents some years before, to which I no longer have fast access to as the neighbour who had possession of the documents moved away some years ago.
The facts aren't the issue, the timescales I have to collect my car is.

PasturesNew

The land belongs to somebody.
I am guessing you are the freeholder of the strip behind your garden - and your neighbour owns the adjoining strip, then so on down the length of the lane.

If you parked on somebody else's "bit" they'd not be pleased. I bet the deeds say you can't park there as it's for access, but everybody does park on their bit.... knowing only they could be annoyed by their own car... so when you moved it and parked it on somebody else's bit, they phoned it through.

You're making me guess/assume how your freehold strips are laid out, which bit/s you own and what the deeds say.

In the main, everybody will own a specific bit and everybody will have access across all the bits to their garage. But each bit is owned by somebody, who won't want other people taking the liberty of parking a SORN'd car there. In many deeds even SORN'd cars can be banned from being parked.

Did you double check/read the deeds and read the words and look at the layout diagram?

bluebrix

We all own the land behind our gardens, and a joint easement of access. My vehicle has been parked on land directly behind our property, with no overlap on adjoining land, no obstruction to anyone else's, and in line with everyone else's parking activity. Many freeholders have opted to lay concrete over their areas as a form of parking space and place a removable bollard there to ensure no one else tries to use it.

If I had to guess, I would say that someone near by does not like the fact that my car has been immobile for a long period, has complained to the council, possibly claiming to be freeholder of our house to get it removed now, and ask questions later.

Again, I can categorically say that yes, it's our land, yes we have a right to park in our "patch", and that no one has a right to move my car from there any more than they could from my back garden.

Yet, it has happened, at what seems like an opportune period in which the local authority are now closed until the new year, and I now face being permanently deprived of my vehicle by a private company who are acting on a 7 day notice before they dispose of it permanently.

Shaun_of_the_Dead

Who has actually seized the vehicle the council or dvla?

bluebrix

I've intentionally defaced details here from StreetView, but show the area in question. You can see that some people have opted to concrete over their patch to prevent people from parking there, some use it as a rubbish dump, and some just let it grow unkempt. My vehicle was parked right up against our back wall in land that is ours as per the land registry. Someone also recently snapped the retracted wing mirrors off both sides too, so that is possibly connected if someone wanted to give the car the appearance of being abandoned.

Someone has gone to great length to have it seized and removed.

*EDIT* I can't post image links as I have a new account.

bluebrix

It's a letter with DVLA letter headed paper, with the address being of NSL Services Ltd of Sackville Trading Estate in Brighton (my council). When I go to NSL's website I have a drop down box to choose my area. When I select Brighton and hove it hyperlinks me to my local council website's parking services department. They are closed until the 2nd January.

TooManyPoints

And did you drive the car on a public road other than on the way to and from the MoT test?

Shaun_of_the_Dead

bluebrix wrote: »

It's a letter with DVLA letter headed paper, with the address being of NSL Services Ltd of Sackville Trading Estate in Brighton (my council). When I go to NSL's website I have a drop down box to choose my area. When I select Brighton and hove it hyperlinks me to my local council website's parking services department. They are closed until the 2nd January.

But the dvla have nothing to do with your council. Was it seized for being abandoned or for no tax?