Not all ‘well established’ statutory processes mean they are a perfect system, including auctioning off ‘abandoned’ vehicles like Samantha Tozer’s (Courier, March 10, and here).

If a car is suitable and safe to sell has it really been abandoned?

Whatever the reason Samantha saw fit to leave her car at the airport for six months, the Department of Infrastructure say themselves that she and others are liable to fixed penalty notices, fines, and removal and storage expenses.

Is this a conscious decision anyone would open themselves up to?

A notice on the car and letters to a home address are not adequate attempts to trace the owner.

This is a lackadaisical approach, because if the police needed to speak to the owner for a serious reason they would be found immediately.

If the owner does not see the notice on the car or reply to letters there is clearly a reason for that. What if they had died?

It is not going the extra mile to make a few further enquires such as a policeman in Peel (where Samantha lives) to pay a visit to her address.

An unanswered knock on the door could necessitate a peek in her letter box, most likely showing evidence of unopened mail.

Minutes’ worth of productive police time on their rounds, as opposed to hours sitting in vans waiting for possible offenders. Samantha states the Department of Infrastructure did not send a letter ‘advising of the action taken’ of selling her car as the DoI spokesperson said.

I recently waited weeks for important correspondence from a government department, only to be told they had sent me a letter that I did not receive.

They had my e-mail address which, had they bothered to write to me on, would have saved me weeks of angst and got the job done for them.

But if the police feel this is not a good use of their time there are trainees and administrators who could be utilised, even just to put the vehicle registration number on their Facebook page for someone to recognise.

Having the most methods of communication history has ever seen there is no excuse for lazy searching.

Just because something has always been done one way doesn’t make it right.

At the very least the DoI need to inform poor unsuspecting people like Steve Babb that they are buying an abandoned vehicle to save inconveniencing them.

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This letter was first published in the Manx Independent of March 16.