UKIP Uncovered
What motivates the leaders of the United Kingdom Independence Party?


Sunday, November 16, 2003 

Troy's Car Seizure

Part of the early controversies surrounding UKIP's MEP Candidature Lists for the North East region for next years European Parliamentary elections centred around whether it was desirable to field a discharged bankrupt. The party leaders decided it would be no hindrance and matters proceeded.

Christopher Booker in his Sunday Telegraph column this morning, demonstrates such controversial matters continue for UKIP's Branch Chairman in the Prime Minister's Sedgefield Constituency, Peter Troy:

When two men claiming to be bailiffs arrived at Peter Troy's farmhouse near Darlington at 8.40 one morning, to seize his car in payment for unpaid parking fines, he did not realise that he was the latest victim of a nationwide scandal. The visitors clamped his car, waved an official-looking piece of paper and demanded his keys.

Mr Troy called the police to stop the removal of a vehicle vital to his business (as demonstrated by his insurance papers), but when the police arrived, they supported the seizure. If it had not been for the intervention of a helpful neighbour who loaned him the money to pay the £295 fines plus a £219 fee for the "bailiffs", the car would have been removed.

Mr Troy was shaken by what had happened, and decided to look into its legal justification. What he found astonished him. Section 54 of the Magistrates Courts Rules expressly prohibits bailiffs from removing vehicles used in the course of employment.

Furthermore, section 78 (7) of the Road Traffic Act 1991 states that any person who attempts to seize goods in payment of parking fines who is not "a certificated bailiff" (and anyone "authorising him") is committing an offence of trespass.

The two men who turned up at Mr Troy's home to seize his car, an act in itself illegal, were not "certificated bailiffs" but described themselves as "authorised personnel" of TNC, a company which is a corporate member of the Certificated Bailiffs Association, now known as the Enforcement Services Association.

posted by Martin |9:07 AM
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