Anybody attended court to appeal an untaxed vehicle?

DanTheMan

DanTheMan

DanTheMan

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I'm just wondering if anyone can shed some light on what to expect when appealing a fine via statutory declaration? (It was absolutely our fault; first time buying a car from a dealer where they sorted out the VED and completely forgot that it wouldn't auto renew via direct debit. The outstanding amount was £1.67 and we've been fined a total of £612 including bailiff costs due to a failed mail redirection)

Will we be given time to be questioned in regards to the reason for appeal or will the decision have already been made based on what we wrote in the appeal letter? Its actually my wife who will be attending as she is the registered keeper and she is worried about being interrogated!

Thanks.
 
So the only way bailiffs are involved is that there has already been a judgement.

So you need to provide more details. Is this a set aside hearing?

What is the £1.67 for? The fine for being untaxed is far higher than that.
 
muon said:
So the only way bailiffs are involved is that there has already been a judgement.

So you need to provide more details. Is this a set aside hearing?

What is the £1.67 for? The fine for being untaxed is far higher than that.
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I believe a judgement has been made on the case but my wife does not have a CCJ against her name on her credit file and one doesn't seem to have been recorded with the courts.

The £1.67 is the amount of VED we had essentially not paid due to the car being untaxed. The fine was £20.

We had moved house a month before the car was fined for being untaxed. We hadn't updated the v5 at this point to the new address but did have a 3 month mail redirection to the new address. We never received anything from the DVLA in the 2 months following the car having a sticker being put on it for being untaxed.

We paid the tax and set up a direct debit within an hour of the car being stickered for being untaxed. We never received any correspondence from the DVLA even after updating the address on the V5 and it was only a year after it happened that we received a bailiff letter which is when we discovered all of this correspondence which we had supposedly had ignored.

The fact that we were initially fined is absolutely fair as we made a mistake with the VED. I would willingly pay a £20 fine but total costs of £612 seems pretty disproportionate to the crime.
 
I suspect you will find you have no defence and it will be thrown out of court. The only reason this happened without your knowledge isn't down to the failed mail redirect but because you have committed another offence of not updating your v5 with your new address which means you could end up getting prosecuted and fined up to £1,000 for that.
 
If anyone is interested and in case it helps anyone in the future:

The statutory declaration was accepted and the fine was changed to £115 from the original £612. My wife was only in the court for 5 minutes (after a 6 hour wait :().

I think they were just glad to see someone being honest. The fact that we paid the VED and the original fine as soon as we were aware seemed to go a long way to showing that it was a series of honest mistakes with a disproportionate fine levied.
 
DanTheMan said:
If anyone is interested and in case it helps anyone in the future:

The statutory declaration was accepted and the fine was changed to £115 from the original £612. My wife was only in the court for 5 minutes (after a 6 hour wait :().

I think they were just glad to see someone being honest. The fact that we paid the VED and the original fine as soon as we were aware seemed to go a long way to showing that it was a series of honest mistakes with a disproportionate fine levied.
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Pretty much this, honesty - and rectifying as soon as you'd realized - went a long way here,my old man used to be chairman of the bench and he often commented that a defendant simply putting their hands up often went far better than a vigorous defense......
 
To be clear when you swear a Stat Dec in court the court isn't delving into the truth (or not) of the statements you're giving. From when you find out about proceedings against you, you have 21 days to make the declaration. What the court will be doing is attesting that you have made the declaration within the relevant 21 day period.

Making a Stat Dec sets aside the previous convictions and restarts the proceedings.
 
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