The Law's an Ass!
I’ve just read an article in a caravan magazine that totally amazed me….but for all the wrong reasons.
Apparently a couple had saved an extortionate amount of money and put it all into their dream retirement, a brand new caravan costing over £20,000.
When it wasn’t in use they left it in a “secure” compound, as many people do.
Unfortunately the “secure” compound was not that secure and someone stole their caravan!
The incident was reported to the Police who did all they could but the caravan was nowhere to be found.
A second blow came when the couple realised that their Caravan Insurance had expired, so there was no pay-out to buy a new one!
18 months later the couple where contacted by the Police saying they had found their caravan only 10 miles away on a Travellers Site no less, with a young family with two children living in it! The caravan had also had £10,000 worth of improvements and extras fitted to it by its “new” owners!
This is where the story gets even more unbelievable. Although the caravan had been found and confirmed that it was the one that had been stolen, the caravan could NOT be returned as the Police had “no Lawful powers” to recover the caravan. Apparently the Traveller family had a hand written “receipt” for the caravan (apparently bought in a pub) for £300, even though the caravan was worth in excess of £20,000! Also the Law states that the Traveller family would have had to have been rehoused BEFORE the caravan was repossessed!
The unfortunate couple who had saved every penny to enjoy a happy Retirement with this caravan, are STILL paying the caravan off at £250 a month, and cannot afford the legal costs to action the repossession or the caravan.
Sometimes the Laws in this Country of “ours” beggar belief. It proves that being law abiding and trying to acquire possessions through the proper means, cannot be taken as being the “rightful” owners!
Let’s all try to make it as hard as possible for those unscrupulous people, but no deterrent will stop someone who is determined to take what is not theirs, it’ll just make it take longer to get at!