A Business owner was penalized £275 for driving,
A Business owner was penalized £275 for driving into London’s Ultra Low Emission Zone.
Bradley Wilkin, 59, the director of an Essex burglar alarm company, noticed that money had been stolen from his TfL Auto Pay account for 22 ULEZ charges.
The zone was established in the capital in 2019 and was expanded the following year.
Bradley’s two vehicles, on the other hand, are less than four years old and hence exempt from the £12.50 daily tax.
TfL’s database wrongly assumed the diesel model was a 2013 van and hence liable for the fee due to a 2013 registration number.
It was, however, a customized number plate of BM13 SEC, designed to replicate the name of the Epping-based company, BMB Security.
Bradley stated that the number plate was previously registered to a 2013 diesel Audi estate that was not consistent with ULEZ requirements before being transferred to his then-new diesel Citroen Berlingo van in 2019.
The van and its registration plate were then registered on TfL’s Congestion Charge Auto Pay system, so that the daily charge would be automatically paid and no fines would be incurred each time he drove into the capital for work.
However, when the ULEZ was implemented in central London, TfL charged him an additional £12.50 per day on top of the congestion penalty.
Bradley claimed he was unaware of this due to the payment system’s automatic nature.
He wasn’t aware of the problem until the private number plate was removed from the 2019 model at the end of last year and replaced with another personalized registration – CA11 BMB.
The daily ULEZ charges were no longer debited to his account when the new registration was lawfully affixed to the 2019 van.
However, when the old BM13 SEC plate was moved to another brand-new Citroen van purchased in December 2021, the ULEZ charges resumed.
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) correctly registered and removed both vehicles’ personalized number plates, and copies of the V5 registration documents were supplied to them.
