Vehicle Recovery Penalties – Police forced to repay penalty and “unlawful” land reinstatement charge.

An interesting encounter between Simon Clarke and the Police. A truck belonging to our client, a major international haulier, got lost following his SatNav. He tried to use a farmer’s field to complete a U-turn and, unsurprisingly, got his 44-tonnes truck stuck-in-the-mud!!

A bright police officer then turned up and decided the vehicle was “Abandoned” even though the driver was present, and slapped a £2,000 “Vehicle Recovery Charge” on the truck and trailer. The police then got a recovery agent to remove the vehicle – he imposed a further £750 “Land Reinstatement Charge” on behalf of the farmer.

Simon Clarke for our client argued that both the Recovery Charge and the Land Reinstatement charge were unlawful. Upon learning that we were prepared to go to court to argue the matter the Chief Constable agreed that the charges were unlawful and repaid them together with our client’s legal fees. Just goes to show: the police aren’t always right.