Police won't reimburse for wrongly impounded car

[Aretnap]

The law is actually pretty clear in that if you show a valid insurance certificate which covers the driver's use of the vehicle, then the police have no right to seize the vehicle. End of. What the police believe is irrelevant at that point.

 

Of course the police might misunderstand the wording on the certificate, or believe reasonably but incorrectly that it's not a valid certificate, and decide to seize the vehicle. But if they do then they do so at their peril - if their suspicions turn out to be wrong then they will have acted unlawfully and they will be liable for the costs incurred by the vehicle owner/driver as a result of the unlawful seizure.

 

The relevant case Lay is Pryor v Chief Constable of Greater Manchester. In that case the police thought that the policy did not cover what the certificate said it covered, so they called up the insurance company to check and were told that the driver was not covered to drive the car. The call centre bloke was wrong, the policy did cover the driver, so the Court of Appeal held that the police were in the wrong and that they were liable for the return of the impound fee, along with associated costs. The same principles would seem to apply here; assuming that the OP is correct in that the insurance policy did cover the driver's use of teh vehicle.