Advice re Bailiff

DaveJH

Can someone help me with a question about Bailiff's.

The people that used to own my house have still not updated details of there car with the DVLA and as a result there penalty notices and TFL Congestion charge notices keep arriving. I have been sending them back 'No longer at the address' for over a year now!

I've recently started opening there mail as I'm fed up with it :mad: , a letter arrived today from CCS saying that they will be sending a Certified Bailiff to collect the debt for a PCN and that a warrant has been issued by Northampton County Court.

So my question is should I contact CCS and tell them that the person they are after has moved or should I wait for the bailiff to arrive and tell them? I'm assuming that although it has a court order it's against the person not the address and that I can refuse entry to my house.

I have managed to get hold of there new address, so should I pass this info on to them?

rayday2

I had a baliff turn up at the door for the previous house owner. He was actually very nice and said they expect people to have moved on. I offered to get my solicitor papers etc to show him we had bought the house but he said it was fine and went away.

You could write to them if you want to avoid then coming.

GeorgeUK

Not sure you should contact them.

Opening someone elses mail i believe is an offence (mail fraud). Don't want to get yourself into trouble for this - even if you did open it by accident

DaveJH

Thanks for that, I think I'll wait for the Bailiff to arrive.

I though that it would be an offence, but then so is not updating your DVLA information in a timley fashion!

tamarto

GeorgeUK wrote: »

Not sure you should contact them.

Opening someone elses mail i believe is an offence (mail fraud). Don't want to get yourself into trouble for this - even if you did open it by accident

"A person commits an offence if, intending to act to a person's detriment and without reasonable excuse," So no the OP was not commiting an offence by opening the letter.

RAS

Ring the bailiffs and tell them the debtor is Gone away.

GeorgeUK

If you open someone else's mail, technically you are committing a criminal offence. Under the Regulation of Investigatory powers Act 2000 it is an offence to open, destroy, hide or delay any post that is addressed to someone else.

It is the definition of reasonable excuse that will get you as it is not defined by the Act so it would need to be a good reason to stand up in court.

Personally, i'd ring them, but not sure it would be a big issue.

DaveJH

Thanks all, I've just spoken to CCS (did 141 before the number )they have a record of all the previous letters that I returned.
They said that they are stopping all action from now and returning the PCN to TFL. They didn't want to know when I said I had an address that they might want to try!

I'm not 100% sure that I believe them, so I will keep all the documentation to hand just in case a bailiff arrives.