It doesn’t surprise me that 1400 presumably anti ULEZ people are dumb enough to ignore their fines
They probably thought literally blowing up some cameras like a hyper local terrorist would reverse the whole thing.
It will take years more but slowly we are reducing the number of cars, London isn’t the worst out there but it’s very slow to act
The removal of cars has nothing to do with the ultra-low emissions zone, but is a normal part of collecting debt in the UK. In the UK, once a judgement has been issued by the County Court or High Court, a writ will be issued and the claimant can hire County Court bailiffs or High Court Enforcement Agents to enforce the writ. They will go to the defendant’s address and either collect the payment, arrange a payment plan acceptable to the claimant, or seize goods and sell them at auction to offset the amount owed.
If you so much as owe £500 in rent arrears or fail to pay back a £1,000 loan, you could have bailiffs knocking at your door shouting through your letterbox or clamping your car in just a few months time.
Transport for London has no extraordinary authority to seize cars—they go through the legal system and hire bailiffs to collect money owed like any other claimant.
There’s even been a film series about it. It’s called Can’t Pay, We’ll Take it Away. A documentary crew follows a pair of High Court Enforcement Agents as they travel around the country collecting debts. It’s available on YouTube.
One thing TfL should do about ULEZ fines is trying to find a different company to enforce those on foreign victims. I got an unexpected invoice that looked more than shady, and when I googled the companies name, nine out of ten results on the first page were fraud warnings. The only non-warning somewhere near the end of the list was the companies home page.
It was actually an unexpected threat as our car is fully compliant to those rules, and we had to find a lawyer in the UK to bring that point home to those assholes and the TfL.
