Dealing with Abandoned Vehicles

Removal of Abandoned Vehicles from Industrial Estate

When faced with an abandoned vehicle problem, we follow the client’s legal instructions to deal with this issue.

A client recently came to us with a problem on one of their industrial estates close to Heathrow Airport, where there were several vehicles that had been abandoned. These vehicles had been building up over a long period and of course, one abandoned vehicle attracted others. This was causing issues for parking, issues for tenants, and looking an eyesore.

We agreed on a strategy with the client to move this forward.

Firstly, our bailiff attended the site and served an abandoned vehicle notice on each vehicle and photographed these notices (these photographs are important to record the condition of the vehicle and to stop any allegation of damage being done).

The bailiff then carried out some basic checks on the vehicles.

The bailiff did a search on the VRN’s through our warrant database for outstanding warrants, checked if the vehicles were currently taxed, and checked if they were currently insured.

The bailiff also conducted an HPI check to see if the vehicles were wanted by a finance company, stolen, and in order to gain an approximate value.

No one came forward from the notices on the vehicles. None of them were taxed, or insured. In addition, all of the vehicles were not worth very much money.

The bailiff then requested the office conducted an electronic DVLA search which came back within 3 working days. This gave the details of the registered keeper for each vehicle.

The bailiff then drew up and served TORTS notices for each vehicle at the last known keeper’s address. The notice explained that the vehicle is going to be disposed of.

After the expiry of the notice again no one came forward, so the client instructed us to get rid of the vehicles.

The client’s estate was cleared of cars, and they found that by doing this and having a strict parking policy enforced by a professional parking company they had no further problems.

We can help

Quality Bailiffs are available to advise and to remove Abandoned Vehicles.

read more about the
Abandoned Vehicle Removal
service

If you need help with removing Abandoned Vehicles, then contact your local regional office.

About the author

This article was written by Andrew Coates, Authorised High Court Enforcement Officer and full member of The High Court Enforcement Officers Association, and current CEO of Quality Bailiffs.

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