Hi
My partner had a car declared as SORN on our driveway for 2 years one day he arranged for local scrapper to come remove it. The car was undrivable had no battery, flat tyres coming off the rim and immobilser key was lost. My partner managed to push car out onto the road night before so scrapper could get it easily whilst he was at work (not thinking i know).
Our street and drive is very narrow and hed never have got it on truck from drive. Anyways the day the scrapper comes for it we discover its clamped by DVLA. We explained and called DVLA and said it was genuine mistake it hasnt been driven and it was being scrapped anyway we didnt want the car.
The DVLA response to my partner in two seperate calls was dont worry leave it for us to pick up and dont pay for it to be released and we will scrap it. In the second call they said the same and said you wont hear anymore or have to pay anything more it will be settled.
We then got a letter requesting my partners details and requesting permission to scrap vehicle and hand over all ownership to DVLA. We sent this off asap.
Next we recieve letter asking for partners details to when car was purchased and when it left him and what happened to the car. This we sent in.
yesterday we recieved a court summons for sept for unlicensed car with no tax or mot.
Now we never recieved any documents requesting a fine etc from the DVLA and we got a straight court summons. Also we changed address even though car was still off road in a driveway it was at new address i just realised the SORN was at old address could this be the problem?
I guess we thought if it was SORN and off public road we waitited till next renewal but figured it would have been scrapped by then and didnt change it.
Now my partner just want rid of the situation now we have new baby due oct and we just dont need DVLA hassles and is willing to pay fines, if we knew what they were.
Ive seen that DVLA does accept out of court settlements? Would be entiled to do this?
We have no idea what the fine even is as they never gave us any documents with a chance to pay one.
Should we call DVLA and explain that we havent recieved anything to pay fine just a straight court summons? And ask if they are willing to settle out of court fine?
We can afford the fine but an in court fine we cannot with the extra cost takes it well over £1300 we need to reduce this.
Its a unfortunate situation and was a genuine mistake that same day we arranged for it to be scrapped it got clamped a simple mistake that we can do nothing about but we need to rid this problem before baby arrives so we know we can spend on baby equipment etc.
Any advice at all will be apprieciated in how we should handle this situation or if you have been in the same situation to us and know an outcome please let me know.
Many thanks xxx