Crushing blow for car cheats

Wardens armed with the technology to instantly identify vehicles without a valid tax disc are clamping up to six cars in the city every day.

The owners have 24 hours to pay an 80 release fee and any outstanding road tax, before the car is impounded and then sold or crushed after a further seven days.

A total of 2425 cars have been targeted in Edinburgh since NCP Services took over the DVLA contract in May last year.

The company said around 40 per cent of these had been destroyed after their owners failed to claim them.

DVLA officials today insisted they were only punishing "hard-core offenders" and motoring groups said the crackdown was necessary to protect law-abiding road-users.

Bethan Beasley, of the DVLA's wheel-clamping unit, said: "The people whose vehicles have been removed or clamped are hard-core offenders; not people who have just missed renewing their tax by a few days, but people who have shown no intention of taxing their vehicles.

"Routinely we find such vehicles have no insurance or MOT, these vehicles are dangerous and the best thing to do is immobilise them or get them off the streets as soon as possible."

The NCP wardens are patrolling Edinburgh in vans equipped with automatic number-plate recognition technology. Each van is loaded with four cameras, which can read number plates at up to 20 miles per hour, and check them against the DVLA database.

The company has a team of 300 wardens working all over the UK on untaxed vehicles, and it is understood that dozens of them are on patrol in the Capital at any one time.

A total of 6713 cars have been targeted by NCP in Scotland in the past year, the vast majority in Edinburgh and Glasgow.

Sheila Rainger, head of campaigns at the RAC Foundation, said: "Unfortunately, it does seem to be the way that when a car is not taxed, it will tend not to have insurance or an MOT either, so it is important to tackle these drivers.

"It is not fair on law-abiding motorists if those trying to evade road tax get away with it, so something needed to be done.

"Our only concern would be if the database that they rely on for this work is not up to date or is not accurate."

Tim Cowen, of NCP Services, said: "The streets of Edinburgh will be safer because of this new campaign.

"It has never been easier to tax your vehicle - you can do it by post, over the phone, at a post office or online - so there is no excuse for not doing it."

A Lothian and Borders Police spokeswoman added: "Police can also target people with unpaid road tax.

"Often these vehicles are also uninsured and don't have an MOT, which can mean they are not roadworthy and can also put other road users at risk."

In the 12 months to May, around 95,000 untaxed vehicles were clamped or removed from the UK's roads, twice as many as in the previous 12 months.

Last year, city council chiefs introduced new powers to clamp motorists for parking-related offences in a bid to crack down on fine dodgers.

Any motorist who has more than 20 outstanding fines and is parked illegally will have his car clamped.

To get the clamp removed, he needs to supply proof of address and ownership of the vehicle to the council - supplying the vital information it needs to take legal action over the unpaid fines.