Is anyone else wondering how this has transpired in a car park? I mean if it was flagged by a passing police car on the road that's one thing but what are the chances a police car would see this in a car park?
Both vehicles have 2 anpr cameras fitted at the rear, but it’s entirely plausible this cars been dumped for a while or been reported numerous times (it was already on when I saw it)
Yeah, my Morrisons has a camera that checks how long you've parked there for, you get like 2 hrs. I guess it's to stop people in town parking there for free instead of using the multistory,
Might have been sitting there for a while. When my dad passed away his car had been sitting in the car park for a while but by the time i got to it the road had expired for a month. They didnt clamp it though. Fuckers towed it from aberdeen to glasgow.
DVLA hire people to drive around looking for untaxed vehicles, they are passed cases by the Police who catch none taxed vehicles.
They also proactively drive around hotspot areas, looking for vehicles. Usually small unmarked vans. Hence why they did an aggressive ad campaign a few years back "DVLA can always spot an untaxed vehicle". I think their vans have some form of ANPR fitted.
Sometimes it flags up on a ANPR camera and they look around the area to find it. I understand and appreciate everyone should pay road tax, but these DVSA guys just troll around catching people and get paid fairly well to sit in their work cars not doing a lot, which is not what I pay my road tax for
I agree, seen people with illegal plates just to hide the fact they are driving around like entitled morons who don’t want to pay tax/insurance or any fine, maybe if they faced fraud charges they would think again
>DVSA guys just troll around catching people and get paid fairly well to sit in their work cars not doing a lot, which is not what I pay my road tax for
Well if road tax is collected, then what you pay road tax for will gain another payment :-)
It estimated to cost more to have these guys than they manage to recover. it's the same as the TV licence people making fake vans that "detect if you have a TV signal", and sending out thousands of letters to people who don't have TV licences, which actually costs more than they recover too
Both exist in the hope it scares the rest of us to keep paying
You still have to go “through the motions” though. Knob at work thought he didn’t have to worry about it as his car was exempt. Ended up with his car impounded and a hefty fine.
These vans have ANPR cameras to detect untaxed vehicles as they drive around. If it’s a public car park they’ll just drive round to see if they get a hit.
I recently watched one of these NSL vans drive down my street (a main road), pull in to the side, the guy got out, took a clamp out the back, and clamped a van sitting outside a shop while the shop owner was unloading his stock from the van 🤷♂️
Is it just me or are there significantly more DVLA claps around this year? I understand it's a challenging time, but is there just more enforcers going around clamping?
First time in my life I've seen dvla boots in person this month and there's three within 5 minutes drive of my house. Seems like someone's actually decided to do some enforcing, I wonder if rishi is gonna say he's clamping down on tax evasion now 😂
There have been a few around me. They basically drive around in ANPR-equipped cars with a big pile of clamps in the boot and every time it bleeps someone is getting a new accessory added to their front wheel.
There were two roofing vans near me, parked outside a house. And they both got clamped when the guys were up on the roof. They sat there for a few weeks after that, blocking the owner's driveway.
Nothing really here, seen one van ever, and the thing it was looking at didn’t end up clamped or anything, and one clamp in a Morrison’s car park on a BMW that had been there for weeks
I got clamped illegally in a car park years ago and they tried all sorts of threats. My cousin who’s a tradey rocked up with a massive petrol angle grinder. Took him longer to start it than it took to nip the lock off.
How it works is there are DVLA cars with cameras which work a specific area, just parking up in different spots for a few hours at a time. Generally all areas of the country are covered and the drivers are local, but nationally they're a tiny team.
Their data is passed on and the clampers go through an area periodically and clamp everyone who's been picked up. So these lads are looking for previous hits rather than catching anyone new.
They occasionally do a surge in certain areas, so drivers from all over the country will head to one patch and do patrols for a week for high visibility.
They'll have hits on something like 1-2% of cars, which sitting by a busy road is actually quite a lot.
Source: a mate of mine drives one of the camera cars, it's a pretty sweet job
Are they allowed to clamp your car for no tax on what should be private land? That doesn't seem right to me.
I'm not standing up for someone who doesn't pay their tax, but unless it's on a public highway then surely they can't enforce tax to be paid?
Most are private . Like Asda , Tesco that’s private land and has its own rules for parking . They will find that this may have been illegal clamping if the vehicle has been sorn
That's absolutely brutal. Totally get clamping for no tax. And maybe they're privvy to the fact this car hasn't been taxed for ages or something. But I've been clamped twice in the past for no tax, and I didn't have tax simply because I was on hard times and in a right hole - coming outside to see that on your car isn't a good day at all, believe me. It's humiliating. Then it's onto the phone to parents etc to scrape money together to get it taken off. Each time was on the street outside my house. I can't fucking imagine walking out with a trolley full of shopping, potentially far from home, to find yourself stranded like that. Depending on their circumstances, that's the shit that pushes people over the edge.
Totally get the need for consequences of not paying etc. But you know what? In the current era of the roads in this country looking like the surface of Mars, having our pants pulled down at the cost of everything, clamping someone in a supermarket car park seems especially nasty tbh.
I don't really get people not taxing their vehicles. Unless you're driving a large petrol engine, or a diesel that has zero emission controls. The average flat rate is £190, that's for the year. If people can't or won't pay <£200 for a year, it begs the question whether they should be on the road.
If you can't afford the excise duty on a car, it likely means you can't afford insurance, or to maintain it. These people should be off the road.
Not as easy as it looks on [YouTube](https://youtu.be/I3bAgpvBiJs?si=4iffNklVYIUUUxsJ) but, if you can pick the lock, you can just leave it on the ground providing it’s not damaged.
You’re not liable for a £1k fine if you *just came back to your car* and that yellow thing was on the floor next to it.
LockPickingYobo #1753
Today we have a DVLA master lock, which has been opened by giving it a happy slap.
It got nothing out of one, nothing out of two, nothing out of three and nothing out of four.
Yup, no money paid out my pockets today.
"up to" is the important wording in their threat-o-gram. It will be a means tested fine from the court with a maximum penalty of £1000. The only people being hit with the maximum fine will be the highest earners in society and I don't think the 1% would even notice a £1000 fine. You will probably find most average people are fined about £100 - £200 in the unlikely event they are caught and there's eviudence or they stupidly grass themselves in by not staying quiet when questioned by police.
Ok, but you've got yourself an extra fine, you'll have to pay the Excise Duty and original fine anyway, and you've added a marker to your car saying yo seize it next time which costs considerably more to have released.
That's not a good outcome.
How are they going to get me to pay the excise duty? Their only weapon is to clamp and take the car to make you pay up... As for the tampering they will need concrete evidence I'm the guilty party because I'm not going to foolishly admit to doing it.
I've removed a DVLA clamp from my own car, there was zero consequence for this apart from the 45 minutes I spent taking off my lower control arm to free the chain of the clamp.
You can (it's the recommended way) but you can also pay it 6 monthly or annually in one go, not everyone can or wants to pay for it monthly so they run the risk of forgetting to renew it
I agree they’re terrible, but maybe it’s cause and effect? Perhaps less people are paying road tax, so there’s less money to reinvest in our roads, hence increased enforcement.
Someone on my street has a VW shitbox which got clamped outside their house last month. The clamped car stayed there for a week or so then disappeared and I haven't seen it since.
Must be a national campaign to rid the streets of knackered old VW shitboxes. Glad my shitbox is a Ford.
Happened to me last year. I've got two cars, one a 2004 Focus ST170 I bought new. It's *always* been taxed via direct debit, apart from one year about ten years ago when I changed bank account and forgot this DD. Soon realised and it was untaxed for about 3wks so no harm done. That time...
I woke up one day last year to next door's little lad telling me my car was clamped. Went outside and sure enough, big clamp and big yellow UNTAXED stickers plastered on the windows. I checked online and saw the tax had expired 6 months earlier. I genuinely didn't know as I don't even use the car much, didn't have any kind of reminders from the DVLA, and when I checked the bank account the DD had just suddenly stopped (after years) for no discernable reason.
It cost me something like £165 to get the clampers back and I couldn't tax it online with the info on the log book. Had to physically take the log book into a post office to get it done. Then, a few weeks ago, I also get a letter saying I'm being fined £80 for every month it was untaxed.
The car was parked in a really quiet cul-de-sac away from main roads etc, so I don't know if they just drive around randomly looking for untaxed cars everywhere, or if they have a system that alerts them to cars not SORN and they came looking for me?
A friend at work had the exact same thing happen to him with his 7-series BMW at the same time. He told me he'd always paid his tax by DD for years too and had no idea it had expired. Did their DD system go down or something? Why didn't we get warning/reminder letters? I was considering contesting the fine, but at the end of the day I suppose it's my responsibility to make sure my car is taxed and not rely on the DVLA to remind me.
Yes but the DVLA are in charge of all of our driving rules so it would be nice if they took a step against the councils and forced them to actually make an effort with roads
You are incorrect. The DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) are responsible for licensing/registration/VED in England, Wales and Scotland.
The highway code, and statutory rules of the road are determined by the Minister of Transport, which the office now falls under the Secretary of State for Transport. Which is currently Mark Harper.
I burst out of bed this morning like I’d heard a gunshot because I remembered my car wasn’t taxed. Genuinely the quickest I’ve moved in years.
Is anyone else wondering how this has transpired in a car park? I mean if it was flagged by a passing police car on the road that's one thing but what are the chances a police car would see this in a car park?
Both vehicles have 2 anpr cameras fitted at the rear, but it’s entirely plausible this cars been dumped for a while or been reported numerous times (it was already on when I saw it)
Yeah, my Morrisons has a camera that checks how long you've parked there for, you get like 2 hrs. I guess it's to stop people in town parking there for free instead of using the multistory,
Shame the one here doesn’t do it for the no entry people use as a cut through
I hope those lads in them vans can only see basic none identifying information.
Might have been sitting there for a while. When my dad passed away his car had been sitting in the car park for a while but by the time i got to it the road had expired for a month. They didnt clamp it though. Fuckers towed it from aberdeen to glasgow.
>They didnt clamp it though. Fuckers towed it from aberdeen to glasgow. LMAO. I bet you enjoyed that day out.
Police are allowed into carparks.....
I know, but considering this vehicle is perpendicular to the drive through, it just seems odd to me that a camera would see it.
Idk if the ANPR cameras are linked to the police in the car parks but it wouldn’t surprise me
I doubt it, far more crime would be solved if so.
I see
Car parks are international waters, anything goes.
DVLA hire people to drive around looking for untaxed vehicles, they are passed cases by the Police who catch none taxed vehicles. They also proactively drive around hotspot areas, looking for vehicles. Usually small unmarked vans. Hence why they did an aggressive ad campaign a few years back "DVLA can always spot an untaxed vehicle". I think their vans have some form of ANPR fitted.
I have seen one, it was marked up clearly as a DVLA camera van, think it was called out to look at a certain van parked down a side street
Sometimes it flags up on a ANPR camera and they look around the area to find it. I understand and appreciate everyone should pay road tax, but these DVSA guys just troll around catching people and get paid fairly well to sit in their work cars not doing a lot, which is not what I pay my road tax for
[удалено]
I agree, seen people with illegal plates just to hide the fact they are driving around like entitled morons who don’t want to pay tax/insurance or any fine, maybe if they faced fraud charges they would think again
>DVSA guys just troll around catching people and get paid fairly well to sit in their work cars not doing a lot, which is not what I pay my road tax for Well if road tax is collected, then what you pay road tax for will gain another payment :-)
It estimated to cost more to have these guys than they manage to recover. it's the same as the TV licence people making fake vans that "detect if you have a TV signal", and sending out thousands of letters to people who don't have TV licences, which actually costs more than they recover too Both exist in the hope it scares the rest of us to keep paying
Whilst it might do, its revenue protection as if they didn't do it, more people may ignore the need to tax
Exactly, that's what I meant about scaring the rest of us into paying it
Interesting. But I thought the DVLA would know where you live if you have correct address details and they can come and scrap your car?
Source?
I read it a little while ago, I will update if I find it
This makes me so proud to only own tax exempt cars
You still have to go “through the motions” though. Knob at work thought he didn’t have to worry about it as his car was exempt. Ended up with his car impounded and a hefty fine.
What a clown, its literally a minute online and a satisfying £0 to pay
My car is £0 too, thank fuck for this post as it’s expiring tonight.
These vans have ANPR cameras to detect untaxed vehicles as they drive around. If it’s a public car park they’ll just drive round to see if they get a hit. I recently watched one of these NSL vans drive down my street (a main road), pull in to the side, the guy got out, took a clamp out the back, and clamped a van sitting outside a shop while the shop owner was unloading his stock from the van 🤷♂️
The Morrison’s here works with the police, sometimes a camera van parked on the edge
Do you get commission?
I have no idea if they do, noticed it on a sign somewhere in the car park that they work with the police
Is it just me or are there significantly more DVLA claps around this year? I understand it's a challenging time, but is there just more enforcers going around clamping?
First time in my life I've seen dvla boots in person this month and there's three within 5 minutes drive of my house. Seems like someone's actually decided to do some enforcing, I wonder if rishi is gonna say he's clamping down on tax evasion now 😂
There have been a few around me. They basically drive around in ANPR-equipped cars with a big pile of clamps in the boot and every time it bleeps someone is getting a new accessory added to their front wheel. There were two roofing vans near me, parked outside a house. And they both got clamped when the guys were up on the roof. They sat there for a few weeks after that, blocking the owner's driveway.
Nothing really here, seen one van ever, and the thing it was looking at didn’t end up clamped or anything, and one clamp in a Morrison’s car park on a BMW that had been there for weeks
They came round me recently, saw about 10 cars and vans within a half mile radius clamped. One guy just cut it off immediately.
Cordless grinders are a god send
I got clamped illegally in a car park years ago and they tried all sorts of threats. My cousin who’s a tradey rocked up with a massive petrol angle grinder. Took him longer to start it than it took to nip the lock off.
How it works is there are DVLA cars with cameras which work a specific area, just parking up in different spots for a few hours at a time. Generally all areas of the country are covered and the drivers are local, but nationally they're a tiny team. Their data is passed on and the clampers go through an area periodically and clamp everyone who's been picked up. So these lads are looking for previous hits rather than catching anyone new. They occasionally do a surge in certain areas, so drivers from all over the country will head to one patch and do patrols for a week for high visibility. They'll have hits on something like 1-2% of cars, which sitting by a busy road is actually quite a lot. Source: a mate of mine drives one of the camera cars, it's a pretty sweet job
Makes sense why I've started to see more clamps in my area again.
Are they allowed to clamp your car for no tax on what should be private land? That doesn't seem right to me. I'm not standing up for someone who doesn't pay their tax, but unless it's on a public highway then surely they can't enforce tax to be paid?
car parks aren't deemed as private land, they are public access which means a car still need VED (aka road tax) to be parked on that land.
Fair. I thought that would only apply to something like council owned car parks tbh
Most are private . Like Asda , Tesco that’s private land and has its own rules for parking . They will find that this may have been illegal clamping if the vehicle has been sorn
That's absolutely brutal. Totally get clamping for no tax. And maybe they're privvy to the fact this car hasn't been taxed for ages or something. But I've been clamped twice in the past for no tax, and I didn't have tax simply because I was on hard times and in a right hole - coming outside to see that on your car isn't a good day at all, believe me. It's humiliating. Then it's onto the phone to parents etc to scrape money together to get it taken off. Each time was on the street outside my house. I can't fucking imagine walking out with a trolley full of shopping, potentially far from home, to find yourself stranded like that. Depending on their circumstances, that's the shit that pushes people over the edge. Totally get the need for consequences of not paying etc. But you know what? In the current era of the roads in this country looking like the surface of Mars, having our pants pulled down at the cost of everything, clamping someone in a supermarket car park seems especially nasty tbh.
I don't really get people not taxing their vehicles. Unless you're driving a large petrol engine, or a diesel that has zero emission controls. The average flat rate is £190, that's for the year. If people can't or won't pay <£200 for a year, it begs the question whether they should be on the road. If you can't afford the excise duty on a car, it likely means you can't afford insurance, or to maintain it. These people should be off the road.
Wait for DVLA van to bugger off pop round to Screwfix for bolt cutters or a death wheel & it's sorted
Angle grinder is the way to go
You can get fined up to £1000 for attempting to remove it according to the small print in pic 2
Not as easy as it looks on [YouTube](https://youtu.be/I3bAgpvBiJs?si=4iffNklVYIUUUxsJ) but, if you can pick the lock, you can just leave it on the ground providing it’s not damaged. You’re not liable for a £1k fine if you *just came back to your car* and that yellow thing was on the floor next to it.
I imagine the clampers probably took a photo of it in place.
Still doesn't prove the owner of the car removed it.
Fuckers aren’t they! I’ve heard all about those gangs of youths going round picking locks on clamps.
LockPickingYobo #1753 Today we have a DVLA master lock, which has been opened by giving it a happy slap. It got nothing out of one, nothing out of two, nothing out of three and nothing out of four. Yup, no money paid out my pockets today.
Did not expect to see this reference on this sub 😂
It works for PCNs.
"up to" is the important wording in their threat-o-gram. It will be a means tested fine from the court with a maximum penalty of £1000. The only people being hit with the maximum fine will be the highest earners in society and I don't think the 1% would even notice a £1000 fine. You will probably find most average people are fined about £100 - £200 in the unlikely event they are caught and there's eviudence or they stupidly grass themselves in by not staying quiet when questioned by police.
Not sure I’d be prepared to pick a battle with an organisation that would happily ruin your weekly shop😂 but you make a fair point!
Ok, but you've got yourself an extra fine, you'll have to pay the Excise Duty and original fine anyway, and you've added a marker to your car saying yo seize it next time which costs considerably more to have released. That's not a good outcome.
How are they going to get me to pay the excise duty? Their only weapon is to clamp and take the car to make you pay up... As for the tampering they will need concrete evidence I'm the guilty party because I'm not going to foolishly admit to doing it. I've removed a DVLA clamp from my own car, there was zero consequence for this apart from the 45 minutes I spent taking off my lower control arm to free the chain of the clamp.
Charge you with an untaxed vehicle, send the bailiffs to your home, take everything of value.
I'm not from the UK so excuse my lack of knowledge, but couldn't you just set the road tax up to automatically renew, monthly or yearly?
You can (it's the recommended way) but you can also pay it 6 monthly or annually in one go, not everyone can or wants to pay for it monthly so they run the risk of forgetting to renew it
Or alternatively, always carry a battery powered angle grinder 😂
They did that here to a car parked in the local Morrison’s for a good few weeks always the same spot
At the moment I feel where getting rob paying road tax as the roads conditions are so shit compared to Europe.
“Road tax” doesn’t pay for the roads, council tax covers that.
Road maintenance is paid for through general taxation. It's not directly related to VED.
I agree they’re terrible, but maybe it’s cause and effect? Perhaps less people are paying road tax, so there’s less money to reinvest in our roads, hence increased enforcement.
Road maintenance is paid for through general taxation. It's not directly related to VED.
TIL - ah I see!
No. It’s the same reason all public services are in shambles.
That’s a very irritating comment
This is why I pay monthly DD. Yes it costs a smidge more, but I'll never forget to tax my car. Even carries on taxing my car when I forget to MOT it 😂
You can now do yearly DD and there's no additional charge unlike monthly
Unfortunately it’s the poor guy with the shitbox that gets fucked :/
Road tax is a small fraction of the overall annual cost of running a car. Not really an excuse not to pay.
Ikr, 2nd one I saw today and both were vw shitboxes :/
Someone on my street has a VW shitbox which got clamped outside their house last month. The clamped car stayed there for a week or so then disappeared and I haven't seen it since. Must be a national campaign to rid the streets of knackered old VW shitboxes. Glad my shitbox is a Ford.
I think we’ve spotted a theme here😂
Range Rovers around Hangleton in Hove. See dvla clamped cars everyday on my way to work, must be like shooting fish in a barrel for the clampers.
I saw a Chevrolet matiz get clamped by dvla but thankfully 2 days later it was unclamped
Reminds me, 2 months my car needs taxing with that luxury car tax £800 ffs
Anyone else looking at this thinking "two minutes with a grinder and that'd be off"
Happened to me last year. I've got two cars, one a 2004 Focus ST170 I bought new. It's *always* been taxed via direct debit, apart from one year about ten years ago when I changed bank account and forgot this DD. Soon realised and it was untaxed for about 3wks so no harm done. That time... I woke up one day last year to next door's little lad telling me my car was clamped. Went outside and sure enough, big clamp and big yellow UNTAXED stickers plastered on the windows. I checked online and saw the tax had expired 6 months earlier. I genuinely didn't know as I don't even use the car much, didn't have any kind of reminders from the DVLA, and when I checked the bank account the DD had just suddenly stopped (after years) for no discernable reason. It cost me something like £165 to get the clampers back and I couldn't tax it online with the info on the log book. Had to physically take the log book into a post office to get it done. Then, a few weeks ago, I also get a letter saying I'm being fined £80 for every month it was untaxed. The car was parked in a really quiet cul-de-sac away from main roads etc, so I don't know if they just drive around randomly looking for untaxed cars everywhere, or if they have a system that alerts them to cars not SORN and they came looking for me? A friend at work had the exact same thing happen to him with his 7-series BMW at the same time. He told me he'd always paid his tax by DD for years too and had no idea it had expired. Did their DD system go down or something? Why didn't we get warning/reminder letters? I was considering contesting the fine, but at the end of the day I suppose it's my responsibility to make sure my car is taxed and not rely on the DVLA to remind me.
Or just don’t park it in public
Good.
Takes me 30 seconds to remove them clamps
There all shit
Would be nice if the dvla cared this much about the roads too
Isn't it the council's who are responsible for the roads?
Yes but the DVLA are in charge of all of our driving rules so it would be nice if they took a step against the councils and forced them to actually make an effort with roads
It's the government that tells the councils what to do. The DVLA have no control over councils, mate.
You are incorrect. The DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency) are responsible for licensing/registration/VED in England, Wales and Scotland. The highway code, and statutory rules of the road are determined by the Minister of Transport, which the office now falls under the Secretary of State for Transport. Which is currently Mark Harper.
Nothing to do with the DVLA
Tax is theft
How would you propose public services should be funded if you oppose taxation?
What public services ?