Woman sent thousands in fines over mystery truck

Fines totalling thousands of pounds have been sent to a woman’s address in west London for a vehicle she knows nothing about.

When the first Penalty Charge Notice (PCN) arrived at Hilary Parker's Hillingdon home on 7 November, she assumed it was a mistake and returned it to the sender.

But the number of traffic contraventions was "quite remarkable", she said, with four in a single day sometimes.

A DVLA spokesperson said people should notify the agency straight away if they were being contacted about a vehicle they had never used.

Ms Parker has a stack of PCNs for non-payment of the Ulez and Dart Charge, driving in bus lanes, parking penalties and road sign contraventions.

More than 30 have arrived at her home in one month.

The fines are for a tipper truck, which has an MOT and has been taxed, but is not Ulez-compliant.

The vehicle’s logbook was also sent to her home - registered to an unknown business and her address.

She said: “Our personal opinion is that it must be fraudulent because for a truck, you know you’re going to have to pay the Ulez every day - and they’ve not been paying it for over two weeks.

"You know if you use the Dartford Crossing you’ve got to pay the charge - and they haven’t paid that either, several times.

"So you can only assume that someone has deliberately chosen to do this in order to avoid paying various cost and fines."

Ms Parker said the experience had been "incredibly stressful" and it was difficult to keep up with the volume of PCNs landing on her doormat.

She was initially worried about her credit rating - but this is based on people, rather than addresses.

Ms Parker said she was concerned that if this was happening to someone less tech-savvy and more vulnerable, it could cause even greater anxiety.

“It does say it can take up to eight weeks for the appeals to go through," she said.

“The DVLA were actually really, really helpful and they said that it’s not that uncommon," Ms Parker said.

"We were given a case number and we’re hopefully going get that vehicle registration number disassociated from our address so hopefully at least any more penalties won’t be coming to us

"But obviously that might take a little bit of time to do.

“Whether it’s deliberate, whether it’s accidental, nonetheless they are still racking up all of these fines.”

A DVLA spokesperson said it would investigate and arrange to remove the address from the record concerned in cases such as this.

"We will also notify the motorist when the change has been made,” they added.