Parking penalty

[jaffacake]

What do I do with a bailiffs notice for a tenant?

[JudgeJ]

Contact the bailiffs and explain the situation. Do not simply ignore it.

[saxy_jag]

Bailiff's are pig-headed and won't leave you alone unless you pay up - no matter how much you tell them it's not your debt. Best to contact the people who issued the original fine.

[JudgeJ]

Bailiffs may appear pig-headed to many of the people from whom they attempt to recover debts because many of those people treat them as if they are pig-ignorant in their attempts to avoid payment.

Bailiffs operate to a strict code and are bound by considerable legislation. The last thing they want to do is to recover a debt erroneously or illegally and have to put matters right afterwards. For this reason they make strenuous efforts to ensure that debt recovery is only made from the correct party and in the correct sum.

You will also find that contacting the authority that issued the ticket will fall on deaf ears. Once the appeal procedure or timescales for appeal is exhausted they pass the debt to the County Court for recovery and, quite legally, the issuing authority will refuse to deal with any further correspondence in the matter.

So my original advice stands. Contact them, explain the situation and let them know what is going on. They may ask you questions concerning the person they are trying to contact and may ask you to prove that you are who you say you are. But that does not make them pig-headed. They are a legitimate tool now being used by courts and fixed penalty agencies to ensure that the huge problem of fine and fixed penalty avoidance is reduced.