Volkswagen ID4: Claimant did not know car remained roadworthy after accident
The public would be “shocked” to learn how the credit hire industry operates, a senior district judge has suggested in a case where he had to award £55,000 for an unnecessary 96-day car hire.
District Judge Richard Lumb, sitting in Oxford, said that, had the case been decided on what the claimant could have done to mitigate her losses if her solicitors had made her aware of the full circumstances, the award would have been £11,000.
But that was not the law as laid down by the higher courts, he observed.
In Piercy v Kangethe [2025] EWCC 11, the defendant reversed her car into the parked Volkswagen ID4 leased by NHS Fleet Assist for use by Lauren Piercy, a specialist nurse in Reading.
Liability was promptly admitted and the court had to determine quantum of the special damages claim, principally credit hire, the costs of repair having already been agreed.
DJ Lumb, a former president of the Association of Her Majesty’s District Judges, said this was a straightforward credit hire claim of a type dealt with by county courts every day.
“What might come as a shock to the general public is how the credit hire industry operates,” he said.
“In particular, some may consider the sums of money that motor insurers of culpable policyholders become liable for to be staggering. These are recoverable by operation of the existing common law determined by the higher courts and binding upon judges in the county court.
“In an age where motor insurance premiums are reported to have risen to unprecedented levels, some may find it surprising that there appears to be no real appetite in the insurance industry to campaign for reform, presumably by Parliament, to control the level of credit hire charges compared to the ordinary market basic hire rate.”
Describing Ms Piercy as “an honest, straightforward witness”, he said her oral evidence “provided the clearest insight of how credit hire claims operate in practice and how an innocent motorist effectively cedes all control to the credit hire company and their solicitors once they commence the process”.
Other than being told that the repairs would take about a week, “it was striking how little she had been informed about the details of how the claim was proceeding”, he said.
Immediately after the accident on 7 September 2023, Ms Piercy telephoned NHS Fleet Claims. It transferred her call to Newcastle firm Winn Solicitors, which set up the credit hire on her behalf with its subsidiary, On Hire.
Ms Piercy was never sent a copy of the engineer’s report, which actually assessed her car as roadworthy – she could have continued to drive it until the repairs could be carried out, and told the court she would have done had she known.
Though the parts for the repair were received by the garage on 20 September, for unknown reasons the repairs were not completed until 11 December.
The judge said the trial bundle included a number of telephone attendance notes from Winn Solicitors with the garage.
“These… give an impression of compliance with a tick box exercise process of making regular calls without any proper or detailed enquiry as to why the repairs were taking much longer than expected let alone insisting on any urgency of the need for the repairs to be completed promptly.”
Ms Piercy said she called Winn regularly but “never got anywhere”; it was the same when she called the repairer directly.
The judge said the reasonable period to hire an alternative vehicle should have been about 21 days, from 7 to 28 September.
But as Ms Piercy satisfied the court that she was impecunious – meaning she could not have hired a car herself at much lower rates – the credit hire rates therefore applied.
DJ Lumb said: “In any event, I accept her evidence that she was never advised that she had an option to hire a vehicle herself. Instead, she believed that she was following the process put in place by NHS Fleet for provision of an alternative vehicle. In my judgement it was entirely reasonable for her to believe this.”
Ms Piercy also said that, had she known, she would also have avoided incurring the collection and delivery charges of the hire car, and the recovery and storage charges of the VW.
If she had known all this, the value of her claim would have been limited to the credit hire charges for 21 days, £11,018, together with repair costs of £4,552, and not the claim of £55,271.
“Unfortunately for the defendant, these claims are rarely decided on the basis of what the claimant could have done to mitigate her losses had she known the full circumstances but on the basis of what she did know and any delay has to have been caused by the claimant’s own conduct or actions.
“That is the ratio of the decision of the Court of Appeal in Mattocks v Mann [1973] RTR 13 later confirmed in Burdis v Livsey [2002] EWCA Civ 510 which are binding on this court.”
Ms Piercy’s conduct throughout was “beyond reproach”. DJ Lumb held the defendant liable for the credit hire, delivery and storage charges as claimed.
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