could not say how long cases take
Of 225 councils that answered the question on timescales, 115 said they do not hold or record how long it takes from a report to removal or closure.
The Short Version
Most councils cannot see what this service costs or how well it works.
Councils have clear legal duties to remove abandoned vehicles. Yet many could not tell us how many reports they receive, how long cases take, how many vehicles were untaxed or what the service costs them. Practice varies widely from one council to the next, and few told us they use the DVLA partnership that makes untaxed vehicles quicker to deal with.
Key Findings
Six things the replies show.
do not know how many vehicles were untaxed
Of 229 councils that answered, 117 could not say how many reported vehicles had no valid tax, the group most open to faster action.
councils saw reports rise over five years
Among the 108 councils that gave figures for every year from 2019/20 to 2023/24, reports rose at 57 and fell at 24. Most councils could not tell us either way.
could not say how many reports they receive
31 of 226 councils that answered could not give the number of abandoned vehicle reports they had received.
could not say what the service costs
58 of 209 councils that answered could not give their spending on removal, storage and disposal.
councils recorded no cost at all
These councils reported zero spending or a zero-cost contract. Someone still pays for collection, storage and disposal, usually through the value of the vehicles.
Wide Variation
The same duty, very different services.
- Reports received in 2023/24 ranged from 2 to over 2,500 per council, with a typical council receiving about 386. One council reported more than 16,000.
- Where councils measured it, the typical time from report to removal or closure was 20 days. Individual councils' averages ranged from the same day to 117 days.
- The longest single case reported took 1,563 days.
- 138 of 198 councils that answered use a private contractor; of those that gave payment figures, 23 paid the contractor nothing at all.
- Only 4 councils told us they are DVLA Devolved Power Partners, the scheme that lets a council remove untaxed vehicles itself. Our question asked about keeper-data access and the partnership together, and most councils answered about keeper data, so the true number may be higher. At least 25 said they get keeper details through a third party such as NAFN rather than from the DVLA directly.
- Most councils (206 of 228 that answered) cited the Refuse Disposal (Amenity) Act 1978. 13 said they did not hold information on which legal powers they use.
Is the problem growing?
Total reports each year, across the 108 councils that gave figures for all five years:
Over the five years, reports rose at 57 of these councils, fell at 24 and stayed broadly level at 27. Most councils could not answer this for themselves, because they do not analyse the data.
How Councils Handled the Request
Even answering the question was inconsistent.
- 8 councils said another authority was responsible, often a district pointing to the county or the reverse.
- 21 refused all or part of the request, most often on cost grounds.
- 18 needed more time than the 20 working days the law allows.
- 15 asked us to clarify the request before answering.
Our View
What we see behind the numbers.
The questions above were the same for every council. What follows is our professional view, drawn from leading a council environmental protection team, not a finding of the survey.
- Where a contractor collects vehicles free of charge, it usually keeps the scrap and resale value. The council gives up that value without seeing it.
- Vehicles with real value are rarely sold at auction, although the law allows councils to recover costs this way.
- Untaxed vehicles can often be dealt with faster through the DVLA Devolved Power Partnership, with direct access to keeper details.
- Few councils know what abandoned vehicles cost them in officer time: repeat visits, notices, keeper checks and contractor liaison.
In one rural council, redesigning the process, reviewing the contract and selling vehicles with recoverable value generated significant income from vehicle sales and fee recovery, which comfortably covered the service's operating costs.
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Contact Optima Environmental ConsultingHow we did this
We sent the same Freedom of Information and Environmental Information Regulations request to English councils from June 2026, asking about reports, spending, contractors, legal powers, DVLA partnership, timescales and untaxed vehicles for the financial years 2019/20 onwards. This page draws on the 257 councils whose replies contained information we could analyse.
Figures are as councils supplied them. Councils record and define things differently, so some comparisons are approximate. Percentages are of the councils that answered each question, excluding replies that did not address it. The trend chart leaves out one council whose figures were many times higher than any other. Some replies sent as large spreadsheets are only partly reflected. We do not name individual councils.