A PROBLEM that has diminished during the years that I have been writing this column is that of abandoned vehicles.
Not too many years ago, both Adur and Worthing councils employed an officer dedicated to dealing with abandoned vehicle complaints and in 2002, Worthing Borough Council was receiving upwards of 180 complaints per month.
Various legislation chang
es and scrap metal prices have reduced the scale of the problem in recent years and cars abandoned on the public highway are, thankfully, a rarity these days. Occasionally, however, vehicles are left to rust away on pieces of private land, causing at best a pollution hazard and at worst an arson risk.
Arson attacks on vehicles are still relatively commonplace, with eight happening across Sussex on a single weekend a couple of weeks ago. This is one of the reasons the law changed in 2005 to place a duty on the local authority to deal with vehicles abandoned in the open air (i.e., not just on the public highway), unless the cost of doing so is deemed to be unreasonable (for example collecting a "wreck" from the bottom of a quarry).
In the last few weeks, the council has dealt with some more unusual cases, including caravans being left on the highway, cars left in garage compounds, vehicles on unadopted roads and taxed vehicles in a dilapidated state on the highway. In most cases, the registered keepers assumed that claiming ownership was all they had to do to prove that the vehicle was not abandoned.
However, the primary legislation for abandoned vehicles deals with all these types of cases and allows removal of the vehicles so long as there is justification for doing so.
The evidence required is subjective, but will include issues such as condition of the vehicle, tax status, length of time without moving or whether it contains waste.
It is also worth remembering that abandoning a vehicle is a criminal offence and carries a penalty of a fine of up to £2,500 and three months' imprisonment.
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