HELP!!! Being charged £230 for my husband using the Dartford Tunnel!!!

[Happyland8]

Please help.

I'm not a driver & have never driven on the dartford tunnel so none of this is making much sense to me.

DH is in the Army and is deployed just now. We moved house at the end of last year but today I accidentally had a parcel delivered to my old address, when I went to collect it, they had some mail for us.

Anyway, there were 2 letters saying that DH must pay £115 immediately as he has been charged for not paying to use the dartford tunnel. The incident happened back in April (just as our mail redirection stopped unfortunately) and now it's 2 fines of £115 which we really can't afford.

I can't believe a £2.50 toll road could escalate to this. It has also been reviewed in court without our knowledge so that's also a black mark against DH's name unless I can appeal this.

Has anyone been through this? I'm feeling so upset and stressed by this. We aren't home owners yet and I don't want this to affect us getting a mortgage and I just don't know what I'll do if they don't let us off with it

Gabsalot they close the tunnel briefly every 20mins (I think) to allow dangerous goods lorries through.
And overnight closures of one tunnel is common.

But it does always seem like the tunnel is busy yet the bridge isn’t.

no i realise that but like you said it seems the tunnel side is always busy

It is only the left hand tunnel which shuts. I go in the rhs one unless going to Lakeside. It slows the rhs traffic but it doesn't stop.

That is for the dangerous goods vehicles not the maintenance work.

Just a little update. We appealed and the appeal has been accepted by the Traffic Enforcement Centre which means it's no longer with the courts and now back with dart charge. We should now receive a letter from dart charge with the fines and then we'll need to appeal those charges.

Thanks for all the help & advice. I'll let you know how we get on with appealing the fines.

Well done OP

Brilliant! 🙌🏻
And a hard stare at all the there’s no point calling, it’s with the courts posters.

On what grounds will you appeal?

The fact your husband’s license was not up to date is not a defence. In fact it is an offence

Dilemmacentral, I'm pretty sure it's also irrelevant. The address Dart Charge use is the address the vehicle is registered to, not the address of any driver. Failure to update the vehicle registration address is also an offence, but the driving license has nothing to do with this.

Why are people so keen to catastrophise?
Go though the process OP and 🤞all will be good.

Yes but if breaking the law is your “defence” then you have no chance of being successful in an appeal. As that will be their counter argument, won’t it?!

The vehicle MUST be registered to the address of the registered keeper. By law.

I would just appeal OP and see for yourself if you are successful, obviously there will be posters on here that will tell you not to but there are always lots of those on MN

@Happyland8 do you have an update? Was your appeal successful at all? I've just found myself in a similar situation