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Construction worker Dwight Henry was forced to close his business and lay off his staff after his van with £20,000 of equipment was seized by bailiffs over a wrongly issued parking fine
A simple council blunder has led to the collapse of a business and caused ten people to lose their jobs, a man has claimed.
Construction worker Dwight Henry was forced to close his business and lay off his staff after his van with £20,000 of equipment was seized by bailiffs over a wrongly issued parking fine. He lost £45,000 of contracts when the bailiffs arrived over what had started as a £65 parking ticket.
Dwight had received a penalty charge notice (PCN) in April this year for parking his van in a suspended parking spot – despite him leaving it around five minutes before the bay became unavailable.
The £65 ticket was ripped up by a parking officer, but nearly half a year later bailiffs demanded an increased payment for the fine. The 45-year-old pleaded with Hackney Council to review his case, whilst his debt ballooned to £1,300 and his work van was seized. Despite the council having cancelled the fine, apologising and returning his van, Dwight has been unable to earn for months and will now have to shut down his business – Phoenix Construction East London Ltd – as a result.
The dad-of-five, who lives in Lower Clapton in Hackney, northeast London, has been left with a mere £100 in his bank account. As he begins searching for a new job as a delivery driver, he is calling for compensation from Hackney Council, who he accuses of not wanting to take responsibility. He said: “It has ruined my life. The council have never reached out to me to say, ‘Let’s try and make amends’ I had to lay everyone off. I am pretty much out of business. Construction for me is over. Thirty years. All my life it’s all I’ve known… Since I was 16 years old.”
Dwight approached his van on the morning of April 5 last spring and found a parking attendant issuing him with a ticket at 7.55 am – five minutes before the bay he’d parked in became suspended. After the construction company owner pointed out his mistake, Mr Henry says it was agreed that the fine should be cancelled and the £65 parking ticket ripped up. But five months later he was shocked to receive a letter from bailiffs Newlyn Plc, saying they had been passed a debt of more than £200 for the ticket.
Then, despite beginning the process of challenging the fine with the Traffic Enforcement Centre, his van was clamped and seized by ‘aggressive’ bailiffs at the end of October and he was told his debt had increased to £1,300. Due to his tools – worth up to £20,000 – being locked in the seized van, Dwight says he was forced to forgo contracts amounting to around £45,000 and to lay off his ten employees.
He said: “I’ve been looking for delivery jobs. I usually take jobs three or four months in advance, but the council took that away from me. I have no jobs to sustain me for the winter. This PCN is not legal. It can’t be legal because it was issued before the time of the contravention hours. I haven’t earned a penny from October 23 to the present day. I haven’t been able to work – I’ve had no tools, no transportation. Bear in mind I’m paying for insurance for this van, I’m paying tax and MOT. I’ve just lost three contracts for £45,000 because of this situation. No one wants to review the evidence because if they review the evidence they will see I did not park illegally. No one is listening to me.”
Despite the fine now having been cancelled and his van having been returned to him earlier this week, the business owner says that having been unable to arrange new contracts for the winter means he will now be forced to close his business. Mr Henry, whose five children range in ages between nine and 26, believes the council should compensate him for his loss of earnings during the period when his van was wrongly seized. He added that if a council worker he had spoken to over the phone on October 23 had bothered to review his case, he might not be in the dire situation he now finds himself in.
He continued: “I’m past furious. The stress this brought on me is a different level. The bailiffs were so aggressive it was unbelievable. It was an abuse of power. I think the council should pay me back what I have lost and compensate me for the stress and damage they have caused. The council should take full responsibility for the negligence. But I’m not rich enough to hire a big-time lawyer or anything. The council already destroyed my life. The council officers are still in their jobs, getting paid… But what about my kids, my family? What about the guys I’ve had to lay off, permanently?
“The council don’t take responsibility for their actions. It’s not fair; a man shouldn’t lose their livelihood because of what happened. I can’t say what they should give me, but they should compensate me. I am seeking justice. It’s embarrassing. How can I tell someone, ‘I lost my van because the council took it over a parking ticket for £65’? It sounds like I’m broke… It’s the implication. It’s embarrassing what they have done to me. They’ve embarrassed me in my profession and left me in financial ruin.”
He added that he was forced to shut his previous construction business during the pandemic, and was in the process of rebuilding when the disastrous episode which began with the incorrectly-issued parking ticket in April began. However, despite apologising to Mr Henry and confirming that the PCN was issued incorrectly, Hackney Council claim they wrote to him three times before bailiffs became involved, which included details of how to challenge the ticket.
The council say they did not receive a response, which is why the PCN was escalated. They say they also received a phone call from the enforcement agent in September saying they had spoken to Mr Henry who had confirmed he’d received correspondence from Hackney Council before the PCN was registered as a debt. But having listened back to a recording of the call, the council admitted that Mr Henry told the bailiff he ‘got something in my post that says, ‘Oh, you owe Hackney Council’.
A spokesperson for Hackney Council said: “More than a month passed between Mr Henry speaking to the enforcement agent on 18 September and the vehicle being impounded on 23 October, when Mr Henry had the opportunity to resolve the case. We’d urge Mr Henry to contact us if he would like us to review his case. We’ve reviewed this case and found that the PCN was issued three minutes before the parking suspension began. This should have been cancelled and we apologise to Mr Henry for the inconvenience this has caused him.”
Hackney Council did not comment on whether it planned to compensate Mr Henry or not.
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