Merseyflow - Halton Borough Council PCN baliff Options

[TheOvenglove]

Morning all,

Could I please ask for some advice...

The crooks of this story is that we forgot to change the address of the car (VC5) when we moved house.

My wife went over the new Merseyflow bridge and forgot to pay.


Letters have then gone to the old house and neighbors say they have been sending any mail back with not a this address (which is frustrating as they could have just told us there was post at the house )

Yesterday Marston come knocking for £+400 (they weren't in) but then they have told us that somebody has been round


So we have no idea of the fine but at the same time appreciate that our address was wrong ands that's on us.

Now the tricky bit..

My wife has Bi-polar and that's registered with the DVLA
Her mother committed suicide in 2021 (that might seem a while ago but the impact of that was horrific, she was off for a year, has had several mental break downs since (all can be demonstrated with work attendance / occy health involvement, additional medication and also counselling..

What do I do?

1. Contact Merseyflow explain that she's a vulnerable person, that I'm her primary career and see if they can call off Marstons and let me pay the fine (but not the £400)
2. Contact Marstons with the above (will they reduce the fin to the original starting fine (given it's the first this issue has come to our attention))
3. just pay it

I don't want to do nothing, It's stressing me out and I want to resolve it ASAP

for the moment we have updated with the DVLA the correct address (dreading a potential fine from them aswell)

I suppose the question is what is my best route to resolve but get the cost reduced to a more reasonable value as £+400 is a huge amount of money (well for us it is)

Thank you

TOG

This post has been edited by TheOvenglove: Fri, 19 Jan 2024 - 10:33

[Advertisement]

[Incandescent]

Who is the keeper on the V5 registration document ? That person is responsible for the PCN. This is not a criminal offence, it is under English civil law, and the regulations for enforcing of road user charges PCNs.

There's probably no harm in contacting Merseyflow, but as the mess you are in is of your own making, (not updating the V5), they don't need to respond positively. The bailiffs may agree a payment plan, but your best bet at the moment is probably to contact

www.bailiffadviceonline.co.uk

The only avenue to revert the process back to the original PCN is to submit an Out-of-Time Witness Statement. The forms for this are TE7 and TE9 and can be downloaded from the Traffic Enforcement Centre website

https://www.gov.uk/government/collections/t...nt-centre-forms

It is very unlikely you will get a fine for not updating your V5 from DVLA.

This post has been edited by Incandescent: Fri, 19 Jan 2024 - 14:48

[jimsecurity]

If you moved and didn't change your address on the V5 then all correspondence about the contravention will go to your old address.

The fact its a criminal offence not to update the DVLA is neither here nor there. It doesn't make good the fact Maston found your new address and attempted enforcement.

The warrant with your old address is still a defective instrument and all enforcement taken under it is invalid. Plus, the attempted enforcement is in breach of CPR 75.7(7) and paragraph 12 of the Taking Control of Goods National Standards published by the Ministry of Justice on 6 April 2024.

Filing a TE9 with the TEC (or paying a fixer to do it for you) won't solve the problem. The TEC will just re-issue another warrant with your new address and bailiffs will come round, only this time, the re-issued warrant is now valid.

The fixer will take your money and botch the TE9 form. When you complain because the TEC refused your TE9, she (the fixer) disappears under a rock.

[hcandersen]

Letters have then gone to the old house and neighbors say they have been sending any mail back with not a this address.

Do you have this in writing?

The TEC will just re-issue another warrant with your new address and bailiffs will come round, only this time, the re-issued warrant is now valid.

..rather misses out regulatory steps and could confuse the OP as regards TEC's dual role.

1. They would determine your TE (out of time) submission;
2. Separately, they would deal with the council's request to reissue the warrant

OP, the debt(bailiffs refer to these sums as debts) is the council's surcharged penalty plus court registration fee plus the bailiffs' fees. These are normally greater than the penalty as follows:

Once instructed by their client (the council), the bailiff must send a Notice of Enforcement to the debtor at the address on the warrant and may add £75 fee to the debt, the Compliance Fee.

If the debt is not paid within 7 clear days then the bailiffs may visit and charge £235 in addition for this, the Enforcement Fee.

So far you say that 'neighbours' have returned all mail and added 'Return to Sender'. If they did this with the NoE then the bailiffs were obliged to do some b****y work and see if your address had in fact changed. But they haven't(but we don't know how long ago they visited your old address).

You have to reveal your new address to the council because when you submit TE forms (step 1 above) these would have your new address and would be sent to the council for their comment. The bailiffs' enforcement must halt while TEC deal with your application.

Step 2 would then require the council to request TEC to reissue a warrant to your correct address and as I understand it revert the bailiff process to the NOE stage i.e. take £235 of the debt.

I suggest you keep everyone in the loop. Submit your TE forms* and copy to the council with a covering letter which should be copied to the bailiff.

Dear Sir,
PCN *********

As you will see from the enclosed TE forms, I have submitted an out-of-time request to TEC. The fundamentals of the situation are that I have lived at **** since **** but all notices have been sent by you and subsequently *****(bailiff) to ****(the old address). However, as you will be aware, each notice has been returned to you by (neighbour?) marked ****, you and they have therefore been alerted to the likelihood that the address provided by DVLA was not current. While I accept that you were obliged to use this address through the enforcement process, you should have advised ***** that there was a possibility that my address for service of the Notice of Enforcement was not as stated in the warrant. Had you done so, they would have been able to discover that I live at **** and addressed the NoE accordingly. I would then have responded and *****(is there someone at your old address) would not suffered the inconvenience of being visited by ****(bailiff) on *** date of visit.
Should TEC refuse my application then ***** would be obliged to serve a fresh NoE on me at my correct address and I would tske matters from there.


*- once we've helped you compile, but you don't have much time.