Marston Group removal notice re old driving without road tax

[sharpesgirl13]

Hi - please can anyone advise.

Came home tonight to find a hand delivered 'removal notice' from Marston Group (in my 22 year old daughter's name).

When we phoned him all he would say is that it was for West Hampshire Court for vehicle offence of being without a valid licence.

He couldn't give vehicle, or registration just said it was 14 June.

The thing is my daughter was here in Kent on 14 june - she was at work am and the picked up us from the airport pm (Gatwick).

Nowhere near West Hampshire!

Also,

this removal notice is the FIRST piece of correspondence we have had.

No court papers, no summons, no notice of hearing, no paperwork at all from any creditor

or any court and no previous correspondence from Marstons

- bailiffs have to write first before turning up.

We've had nothing.

Just this removal notice out of the blue.

I'm going to contact the court but what can we do about this bailiff firm harassing us in the meantime?

The guy was just aggressive and rude and not interested.

I'm really worried.

Daughter has just finished Uni and doesn;t have any goods apart from her clothes and make up

but the guy reckons he has a power of entry to come into my house and will take whatever she cannot prove is not hers!

Please help.

Thanks

[dx100uk]

sri so its nothing to do with her

she has a licence etc etc?

she/you need to contact the court ASAP and findout what is going on.

dx

[Bailiff Advice]

I am sorry to say but I think that you are going to find that this matter relates to a Magistrates Court FINE for using a vehicle without a valid road fund licence and the reference to 14th June is the date that the case was decided in court (clearly in your daughters absence).

She should have received from the Court a Summons followed by a Notice of Fine/Collection Order and lastly a Further Steps Notice.

As payment was not forthcoming the warrant would have been issued and passed to Marston Group and they are legally obliged to send a Notice of Enforcement followed by a Enforcement Notice. If you daughter had not received these five previous notices it is nearly always the case that the problem is due to either an error with her registration details at DVLA or more likely....that you may have moved and she did not update her records with DVLA.

If you can post back with further details.

PS: She is entitled to file a Statutory Declaration at the Magistrates Court but please post back first.

[sharpesgirl13]

Hiya - thank you all for replying.

I've phoned the court this morning.

Whilst at Uni, daughter was 'done' on 30th January 2014 for not having any tax. it went to court on 25th June 2014.

The court had her old Uni address so it seems all correspondence and court papers have been going there (she's not lived there since March)

genuinely we had received nothing until yesterday's Marston letter but obviously the fine is hers.

The court have said we can file a stat dec saying that we have not received any paperwork at all until the Removal Notice yesterday

sthat the original fine and bailiffs fees can be removed and then it will be resubmitted to court so she can attend.

In the meantime though, this doesn't stop Marston coming to my house and harassing us all.

I think I'm just going to pay the fine and put an end to it rather than take it all back to court.

And daughter is in severe trouble for not taxing her car in the first place.

How does this affect her though?

Has she now got a criminal record?

 

[Bailiff Advice]

How much is the court fine?

The amount of the court fine will have been set at a much higher amount given that your daughter had not responded to the summons or attend the hearing.

A statutory declaration will allow the summons to be re-issued and she will be given the opportunity to respond to a new summons and to complete a Means Enquiry Form.

The fine should then be set at a much lower amount and she will be given the chance to pay the fine over a set period of time.

By filing a Statutory Declaration bailiff fees will be removed.

In almost all cases that I come across the Magistrate Courts normally always instruct the bailiff company to 'hold' all action on the warrant for a certain period of time to allow the Statutory Declaration to be filed.

Did you ask the court to do this?

YES....The court fine could cause difficulties when applying for car insurance (the premiums could be a fair amount higher).

[Flem]

Not having car tax will not give your daughter a criminal record at all.

She'll have to declare points on her licence for car insurance purposes,

and as pointed out above this may or may not have an impact on her premiums.

Not having car tax is viewed as a pretty minor offence in itself if the vehicle would otherwise be legal (MOT'd, insurance etc...).

I took this from a website.

As you'll see the offence is actually pretty minor, no worse than being slightly over the speed limit.

I did it myself unintentionally a couple of years ago where I simply forgot to renew it.

I'd had the reminder, but I forgot.

Quite rightly I was convicted, took the points, paid the fine and that was it.

No criminal record, and the points fall off my licence next year sometime.

The police take it far more seriously where people have clearly been using their cars in a deliberately criminal manner with no tax,

no insurance, no MOT, provisional licence etc..., or example, their car is declared SORN, but they are driving it,

or it has no insurance (I know having no tax invalidates insurance, but my car would have been insured had I remembered to tax it).

Those are the people the police are more interested in, not people who simply forget, or like your daughter,

probably couldn't afford it and took the risk as a one off until she could.

She's learnt a good lesson early on which is no bad thing.

Few people have no history at all behind them!

 

 

[LynxRoll]

A typical tax disc related fine is in the region of £525 if I recall correctly.

[Bailiff Advice]

Did you manage to get an appointment for a Statutory Declaration?

[Flem]

A typical tax disc related fine is in the region of £525 if I recall correctly.

 

I think your recall is way off the mark for an ordinary fine, though there are always exceptions. The government increased the fine for a Non-Endorsable Fixed Penalty Notice for Vehicle Registration and Excise Licence Offences on August 16th 2013. It increased from £30 to £50, but people were often fined more than this in reality.

 

It's quite interesting that since being caught out myself, purely down to my own stupidity and poor memory, I am much better informed I think than the average motorist now. As they say, every cloud has a silver lining, though it didn't feel like it at the time! As I've become a little fanatical about it, can I point out two things people may not know about the NEW regulations which came into effect on October 1st 2014.

 

Most important is that drivers understand their responsibilities under the new system.

 

Under the new VED system drivers are liable (NOT registered keepers) and face up to an £80 fine plus any back tax due. Failure to notify change of keeper could now land you with a huge £1000 fine.

[LynxRoll]

I was just going by the OP mentioning the court. If a court fines you, you're looking at a £500+ figure.

 

Re-reading it though, the OP doesn't say it's a court fine, just a fine being enforced, so it could just be a DVLA fine. Perhaps the OP could clarify.

[dx100uk]

will still need to go thru court to enforce it.

[DragonFly1967]

I think a couple of people are worrying the OP unnecessarily.

 

A fine, whether it's DVLA or court, for no VEL will not affect your daughter or her insurance premiums. It is a motoring offence, but it is one in the lowest bracket and is NON Endorsable. So there are no points on her driving licence. There is no need to declare it to the insurance company, and it will have no bearing on insurance premium.

 

Even if the insurance company specifically asks "have you been convicted of a criminal offence in the last 5 years", while the answer would be yes (if it's a court fine), forgetting to tax the car isn't exactly the great train robbery.

[Flem]

Spot on DragonFly 1967. It's a pretty minor offence and definitely doesn't constitute anything remotely criminal in terms of anything to be declared, other than possibly on the insurance depending how it's phrased.

I was particularly keen to get over the fact that NOW under the new regulations, any penalty is DRIVER DEPENDENT, so if you get in a car belonging to someone else, be absolutely sure they have valid road tax, or YOU might receive a nasty shock as the driver. This is a significant change, although totally divorced from the original issue.