Baliffs and Dart Charge

[Bluehorse1907]

Will try and keep this clear.

Car in partners name. He forgot to update the logbook address so it’s an old old address. Will call it House A.
We then moved into his parents (House B) to save for a deposit. We moved to our own home over 2 years ago (House C).
Baliffs have turned up out of the blue to House B today with an order to seize goods worth 1500 for unpaid dart charges!
I had autopay set up but apparently it’s not always come out?! I have had ZERO correspondence. No emails. No letters. Partners parents always forwarded out post so nothing went there. It’s in partners name as the car is in his name, but the dart charge account is in mine.
i don’t understand how we’ve heard NOTHING. Not one warning letter, no court letters, no phone calls.
we’ve checked it’s not a scam.

what do I do here?

Does anyone know how they normally track people - could it be that they went via the log book address and all post went to House A?!

You need to take this a step at a time.

If there are Bailiffs and they have a court order but you never received notice of the proceedings, that is grounds to set aside the Court order.

It's basic principles of fairness if you were never served with the proceedings and never had an opportunity to be heard, the court should set it aside so the proceedings can take place fairly with both sides having their say (that is the principle underpinning it).

This is the first thing you need to do. You will need a copy of the court order, the case number and make an application to the court to set aside the final judgment order (the one the bailiffs are trying to enforce - I would expect it to be a money judgment against whoever owns the car in the sum owed). You will need to explain that the first you were aware of the proceedings was the bailiff attending, that you never received the order or any correspondence from the court or even the claim form.

You need to get on with this asap because acting promptly is something the court will take into account. Don't sit on it and think you can come back to it in 5 months or something.

That's the first thing you need to do otherwise the bailiffs will keep trying to enforce plus you or whoever the order is against has an unsatisfied court order on their credit record which you need to have removed.

The second thing you need to do is take it up with DART or whichever company/entity organises that and charges it. If you do have autopay to set up, tell them.

you also obviously need to check that your dart account and the DVLA both have the correct correspondence addresses for you and your partner.

Oh dear, we see this in the advice sector day after day. People who ignore letters addressed to previous occupants of their home sit up and take notice when a Bailiff comes knocking!!

Dart Charge is enforced in much the same way as parking on Council land. Liability for the most part rests with the Keeper as recorded at DVLA.

A notice should have been sent to that address pretty smartly after the charge is deemed unpaid. If there's still no response then it escalates to a Charge Notice which is enforceable as though it were a County Court judgement. The fact that somebody else has a payment account is neither here nor there.

The OP's husband needs to get the Court reference number and make a Statutory Declaration of the circumstances asap. That's actually quite a high bar to clear; court officers hear the same excuses over and over again. What might help here is that it seems the system has failed to take payment where and account was in place to do so.

Good luck and let us know what happens.

Also the company that manages the Dart Charge changed back in the summer and everyone with an account had to update it to ensure continued payments (I was sent several emails about It). It was an absolute disaster and it took weeks for some people to be able to sort it. Did you do that? If not it might be why payments haven't been taken.

Ahh @Seeline I'd forgotten about that!!

What @Seeline said. And it was a right faff. Kept not working. There were so many complaints on local forums.

So correspondence went to address A? When was the registration updated? Not sure you have much defence tbh as onus was on you/dh to update dvla and check payments were made.

I'd agree with that as a general principle.

The distinction here, perhaps, is that it looks as though Dart's system might have failed.

Not necessarily. Everyone with a Dart account was emailed about it last summer and told they had to revalidate their payment card because of the new provider and if they didn't, automated payments couldn't be taken and they would be fined.

So the OP doesn't check her emails either? Or her bank account?

My neighbour’s car got towed due to an unpaid dart charge. She had been totally unaware of it as correspondence was going to an old address and had continued to escalate. But the could obviously find the car in question.

I arrived at my car one day and it was clamped by bailiffs. I had not updated my logbook to my new address and correspondance had gone there.
Although the origional fine was not too much - £50 odd it had been inflated when it went to the bailiffs to £600 with their call out charges and costs.

They said it was illegal to not update the logbook to the new address, and my car was clamped and I had to get to work so I just paid.

I think legally you should check whether not updating the logbook as they told me. If not they may track your number plate and clamp you as they did me and add on more charges, so whatever you do don't let it run on.

I check my inbox a couple of times a day including the weekly glance at the junk folder. Did not get a thing. It just seems like an odd process when there are other ways to contact you other than the log book address. Hands up there that’s our error. Just astonished it escalated without as much as a phone call.

You can be fined up to £1,000 if you don't update your logbook when you change address:

https://www.gov.uk/change-address-v5c/change-name-address-v5c#:~:text=You%20can%20be%20fined%20up,and%20send%20it%20to%20DVLA%20.

Very very odd question, but what date is this relating to? I had a letter about 12 months ago telling me I hadn't paid the Dart Charge & I had!On ringing them it turned out they were updating the software and were having issues with the system sending out PCN's when they weren't due...