‘Bridge toll payment glitch left me with a £27,000 bill’

Motorists are being pursued by bailiffs over £2.50 Dartford Crossing charges, despite National Highways admitting a fault on its online payment platform.

Drivers told The Telegraph that “enforcement agents” had threatened to clamp their cars even as they appealed the charges over the M25 bridge, while others are chased for payments they had already made.

National Highways, which manages the charge, was forced to temporarily extend the payment deadline last summer after a botched IT upgrade sent its systems into meltdown.

Customers at the time reported being unable to pay online. Businessman Peter Donnelly was told to pay £27,000 despite registering his fleet of company cars and bank card on the toll road’s website. In total, he received 35 penalty charge notices.

Mr Donnelly said: “Despite following the procedure and appealing each one through the website, nothing has come back. As you can imagine, emails are never replied to … the phone rings out constantly with no reply.”

Following intervention from his local MP, Robbie Moore, Mr Donnelly was allowed to pay the original crossing rate. A letter from National Highways, seen by The Telegraph, apologised for the administrative failure.

Helen Watkinson, of National Highways, apologised but says the card revalidation defect is now resolved.

One driver, 67, told The Telegraph that he has been struggling for months to inform the “Dart Charge” that he had paid the £5 toll for his crossings, which took place on July 15 last year.

He had paid two hours’ late, but said he had received a letter saying that as long as he paid within 10 days, no further action would be taken.

Two weeks later, he received a letter telling him that he hadn’t paid for his crossing. The driver sent the receipt he had for the crossings through, but instead of no further action being taken, what began was months of stress and worry as the fine escalated.

He was visited multiple times by bailiffs and on one occasion, they clamped his car.

He said: “The matter is out of hand. From £5 to more than £400 when it has clearly been paid and I have a receipt.”

He decided to pay the £426.50, over fears he would not be able to attend medical appointments without his car. Madeleine Ross

35

Number of penalty charge notices that Peter Donnelly received for the Dartford bridge