Abandoned Car Recovery Service Available Nationwide
Finding that a car or other vehicle has been abandoned on your private property can be extremely frustrating. For first reaction might be to try and remove it yourself, which is completely understandable. However, doing so would land you in legal trouble, more than it would the owner of the abandoned vehicle.
Under the Protection of Freedoms Act 2012 abandoned vehicles may only be removed from private land by certain authorised bodies. So what does this mean for you, when you find yourself in this predicament? While you can certainly apply to the relevant authorised bodies to try and get the ball rolling, it can often be quicker and more efficient to hire a dependable third party to handle matters for you.
Professional Vehicle Removal Solutions in the UK
Here at Marpol Security, we can assist private and commercial clients from around the UK with removing abandoned cars, trucks, and other vehicles from their property. Here is what you can expect from us:
Confirmation That the Vehicle Has Been Abandoned
Before we can get going about removing a vehicle from private land, we need to establish that it has indeed been abandoned. There are certain criteria laid down in UK law that can help us determine this. The relevant pieces of legislation are as follows:
Road Traffic Regulation Act 1984
To help us decide if a vehicle classifies as abandoned, we need to ask the following questions:
has the vehicle not been moved for more than three weeks?
are the vehicle’s number plates missing?
are more than two of the vehicle’s tyres either missing or flat?
have the vehicle’s windows or windscreen been broken?
has the vehicle’s bonnet or doors been left open?
has the vehicle suffered visible damage or vandalism to its interior?
is the vehicle covered in rust or mould?
are there weeds or litter under the vehicle?
While there are no hard and fast rules, our Abandoned Vehicle Recovery team would consider a vehicle to be abandoned if we could answer yes to four or more of those questions during our inspection.
Apply Abandoned Vehicle Notices
An abandoned vehicle notice is a public declaration that the vehicle in question is considered abandoned and that steps will be taken to remove it in due course. Our local team will place a completed notice on all four sides of the vehicle, so that the owner cannot later claim that they did not see the notice. We will take photographs of the vehicle, with the notices applied, and include them in our file for evidence, along with our inspection report.
Obtain a DVLA Search
All vehicles should have a Registered Keeper details of which will be held with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). We can normally perform a search with the car’s number plate. If this has been removed, we can check the chassis number and trace the vehicle that way. The DVLA will provide us with the details of the Registered Keeper, who is legally responsible for the vehicle, whether they abandoned it or not.
Contact the Registered Keeper
Once we have the details of the Registered Keeper, we contact them in writing, giving them 21 days’ notice of our intention to have the vehicle removed. This gives them plenty of time to remove the vehicle themselves.
Removal of the Vehicle
Once the period of notice expires and we are satisfied that all legal procedures have been followed, we will arrange removal of the vehicle from your property. Our enforcement agents who served the initial notice on the vehicle will be in attendance to confirm that everything is done by the book. Our team will remove the vehicle using a private tow truck and take it away to be scrapped and certified.