The toll and penalty arrangements covering his weird toll bridge seem to be a complete dog’s breakfast. There have been a couple of threads elsewhere on the topic and in one in particular, a contributor provided a very comprehensive, if somewhat lengthy, opinion of it:
In my view, the real issue with the Warburton Toll Bridge UTCN scheme is not whether a £1 toll can lawfully be charged. The more serious question is whether the much larger Unpaid Toll Charge Notice is being imposed and pursued through a lawful statutory enforcement process.
The byelaws create a mechanism by which a toll is payable for passage over the bridge, and they also set out escalating unpaid toll charges of £30, £60 and £100 in addition to the original toll. On its face, that gives the undertaker a route to claim that a charge has arisen where a toll remains unpaid. However, that is not the end of the matter. The lawfulness of any UTCN depends on whether the enforcement process being used is actually the process authorised by the statutory scheme.
The difficulty is Article 13 of the Rixton and Warburton Bridge Order 2024. That provision appears to apply the Transport Act 2000 road user charging enforcement framework to the bridge, as if the tolls and charges were charges payable under a road user charging scheme. If that is right, then there is an obvious question: why is this being operated through a homemade UTCN process administered by Excel, rather than through the statutory road user charging penalty charge regime?
That matters because the Transport Act road user charging framework is not just about creating penalties. It also brings with it procedural safeguards. Those safeguards include proper prescribed notices, a formal representations process, statutory appeal grounds, access to independent adjudication, and rules dealing with situations such as hire vehicles. Those safeguards exist for a reason. If an operator is going to use ANPR to impose escalating penalties for non-payment of a road user charge, motorists should not be left with only an internal appeal to the same enforcement contractor that issued the notice.
That is where this scheme starts to look legally dubious. The UTCN appears to demand payment of a penalty-like sum, but without the normal statutory enforcement structure that one would expect if the charge is treated as a road user charging penalty. There is no independent adjudication route. There is no apparent statutory representations process. There is no clear transfer mechanism for hire, lease, courtesy car or company vehicle cases. There is no obvious procedural safeguard for someone who was not the registered keeper but was the actual user of the vehicle and the person with the evidence.
The hire and lease vehicle problem is particularly stark. The notice says only the registered keeper can appeal unless written authority is supplied. That may be administratively convenient for Excel, but it is plainly unfair in practice. The registered keeper may be a lease company or hire company with no knowledge of the crossing and no incentive to investigate anything. It may simply pay the charge and recharge the hirer, often with an additional admin fee. Meanwhile, the person who actually used the bridge, attempted payment, held an account, had an exemption issue, or experienced a system failure may have no effective right to challenge the UTCN directly.
That is not a minor inconvenience. It is a structural defect in the appeal process. A lawful enforcement scheme should not impose escalating financial liability while denying the person with the relevant evidence any direct and effective appeal route. If the statutory road user charging framework applies, that problem becomes even more serious, because that framework contains safeguards precisely to prevent this kind of one-sided enforcement.
The internal-only appeal process is another major weakness. Excel appears to be issuing the notices, controlling the appeal process, deciding the appeal, and then threatening debt recovery if the appeal is rejected or ignored. That is not independent scrutiny. It is the enforcement contractor marking its own homework. For a statutory charging regime involving ANPR, keeper data, delayed notices and escalating charges, that is an unsatisfactory and arguably unlawful substitute for the proper statutory process.
The court point would be straightforward. Excel and the undertaker cannot have it both ways. If the £30, £60 or £100 UTCN is in substance a penalty charge for failure to pay a road user charge, then the court should ask why the statutory Transport Act enforcement regime has not been followed. If, on the other hand, they say the UTCN is not a penalty charge under that framework, then they must explain exactly what legal creature it is, why it is recoverable as a civil debt, and how their own UTCN process lawfully bypasses the safeguards that appear to be incorporated by the Order.
That does not mean every motorist can simply ignore the £1 toll. The toll itself may well be lawfully payable. But the enforceability of the much larger UTCN is a different issue. The lawfulness of that charge depends on proper statutory authority, proper procedure, proper notice, a fair opportunity to challenge, and proof that the person pursued is liable.
My opinion is that the scheme is vulnerable because it appears to graft a private debt recovery model onto a statutory toll regime, while avoiding the statutory safeguards that should accompany road user charging enforcement. That is the point I would expect to be tested if Excel or the undertaker ever tries to pursue these UTCNs through the civil courts.
Are parking companies using their KADOE contract to get driver details? Or because under bylaws they can access directly?
That point is also addressed by the same contributor:
DVLA “reasonable cause” is not a free-for-all. A company cannot simply obtain registered keeper data because it says money is owed. It must use the correct route, for the correct purpose, and only where it has proper authority to do so.
Excel’s normal electronic DVLA access is through its KADOE contract, which is tied to private parking enforcement, ATA membership and parking-related data requests. This is not a parking charge. It is a statutory toll/Unpaid Toll Charge scheme. So if Excel is obtaining keeper data through its ordinary parking KADOE route, that raises a very serious question about whether the data has been requested and processed outside the scope of that access.
If Excel is not using KADOE, then the likely alternative would be a V888/2A “reasonable cause” request. But that is effectively a manual route. It requires a company to submit a request identifying the reason for needing keeper data, supported by the relevant basis for the request. That is very different from the fast electronic KADOE system and would be far more cumbersome if Excel is issuing Warburton UTCNs in bulk.
That leaves three possibilities. Either Excel is using KADOE, which would be highly questionable because this is not a parking event; or Excel is using V888/2A, in which case there should be a manual reasonable-cause audit trail for each request; or there is some bespoke DVLA arrangement for this toll scheme, in which case Excel or Peel/MSCC should be able to identify it.
That is why this has the potential to open a can of worms. The question is not simply whether keeper data could ever be obtained for an unpaid toll. It probably could. The real question is how Excel obtained it, what reason was given to DVLA, what route was used, and what authority Excel had to request it for this particular statutory toll scheme.
A DVLA SAR should expose who requested the data, when, through what channel, and for what stated reason. If it shows that Excel used a parking-related KADOE request for a non-parking toll enforcement scheme, that would be a serious DVLA, data protection and authority issue.The thread is still ongoing and has become more complex. Recently a registered keeper has received a NIP, alleging that an overweight vehicle was driven over the bridge in contravention of the Bylaws. It informs him that it is a criminal offence but that if he was not he driver, he can
"transfer liability" to another person by providing their details.
The thread is here (17 pages):
https://forums.moneysavingexpert.com/discussion/6669616/warning-about-a-new-anpr-toll-on-warburton-bridge-over-manchester-ship-canal-managed-by-excel/p1
