challenging fine for not updating address on V5 form

[ChipmunksInAttic]

Hi,

We have been living in the UK for the last 4 years, 3,5 years of which at the same address. Recently we moved our house (like 5 months ago) and we updated our address everywhere we could think of. We went to the police to update our address certificates, updated our address in DVLA and driving licenses, however it seems we skipped V5 form, as we genuinely didn't know/think about it.

Today at 6am in the morning the doorbell rang and an agent from a jurisdiction office was at the door, saying we either pay £890 right now or he'd take our car away, as we failed to let them know our new address, and unfortunately skipped paying a low emission zone fee or something like that recently, which made them aware of it.

Anyway, we had to pay the fine, but it is a huge amount to be honest for such a mistake. Obviously we weren't trying to avoid anything, we did our best to update our address everywhere but this kind of paperwork can easily slip off of your attention if you haven't lived in this country for longer and you are not really fully aware of it's importance, am I wrong?

Now we really would like to appeal at the court, but we are on Tier II visa, and we heard that appealing anything at court would leave a mark in our records which in turn would cause a delay/problems with our application for ILR (indefinite leave to remain) next year.

Can someone advice if that is the case, and if we should appeal or not? And do you think we have grounds to challenge the decision?

Many thanks in advance.

I don’t know how it would affect your visa application but in terms of appealing the fine, what would your grounds be? The fine was for not updating your V5 - you didn’t update it. Part of the responsibility of owning a car is keeping the documentation up to date. The V5 itself tells you to keep the details current and has spaces for every update it might need. I don’t think a court would accept ‘I didn’t know’ as an excuse, to be honest.

From what you've said I can't see what your appeal would be? I don't think you can use not being aware of the importance of the form would be accepted. Just suck up the fine and learn for next time.

I suspect you have been convicted for failing to pay the emission zone fee and that the people who called were bailiffs who have added their own charges onto the fine.

Unless you have received a new V5C with your current address you still need to update it.

Regardless of whether you've been convicted of the emission zone offence or failing to update your V5C, I agree with others that I don't see any grounds for appeal. Ignorance of the law is not a defence.

Was the fine originally imposed in a magistrates court in your absence (because you didn’t know about proceedings because you hadn’t changed your address)? If so then you can contact your local court and request to make a statutory declaration that you weren’t aware. This has the effect of wiping the slate clean but then the process starts again with you there and you will have to plead to the charge etc. The advantage of doing that is you’ll probably get a lower fine, but it’s unlikley you’ll be able to recoup the bailiffs fee (you’ll get the original court fine back but not whatever the bailiffs added on top).
I have no idea how that might effect anything else but the statutory declaration procedure is pretty common.

Not clear if the fine related to the actual failure to change the V5, or if it relates to a low emission zone penalty and you didn't know about it until the bailiff turned up, because the penalty would have been levied against the registered keeper/address and that wasn't up to date.

Ignorance is no defence - but you might get the clock reset as pp said with a statutory declaration. But essentially the issue has been caused by you failing to do two things that you were required to - fill in the V5 and pay the emissions charge.

you can hopefully get the emissions fine reduced because of the missing V5 info but the fine for not updating the V5 is legitimate and correct and should just be paid.

Many thanks for your valuable comments, helps a lot. I'll then contact the local court make a statutory declaration for the emission zone fees. Lesson learned at least... :)