Criminal damage to car, police asking for a repair quote

[andrebar]

My daughter caught someone trying to force her drivers door open last night. Police have a suspect in custody & are asking us to present a quote for damage repairs. To be frank the damage is something I’d fix myself before wasting my friendly local garages time on the chances of a scrote being persuaded to cough up for their bill.

Just wondering if the police need a repair quote to persuade the courts that sufficient damage actually occurred for a slap on the wrist.

[CoreyDog]

If I remember rightly, sentencing guidelines go off the value of the damage, it’s also useful for the court to know as 50p worth of damage will be treated differently than say £1500 worth.

Just get a quote from a local body shop, forward it on. Don’t need to actually get it repaired there.

[andrebar]

Thanks, I’ll do that.

[edthedead]

CoreyDog said:

If I remember rightly, sentencing guidelines go off the value of the damage, it’s also useful for the court to know as 50p worth of damage will be treated differently than say £1500 worth.

Just get a quote from a local body shop, forward it on. Don’t need to actually get it repaired there.

Just to say, exactly that 👍

[Joe M]

Yeah, get the quote from the most expensive bodyshop you can find.

[Nibbles_bits]

Joe M said:

Yeah, get the quote from the most expensive bodyshop you can find.

Unless they're looking for an out of court resolution.

I had a first time offender break a car window. I asked the Victim to get some quotes for the damage. They got back to me with a bill for circa £700.

Unless this bill was paying for the shipment of a OEM part directly from Japan, that's over priced.

The Suspect came back to me with 2 qoutes for circa £150.

[andrebar]

Got one quote yesterday & that was almost what we paid for the car. I’m not going to faff around over a payout for what is a very diyable patch up job so I’ll just forward that & let the police deal with it. Can’t imagine this suspect has any means to pay anyway. He was evidently using improvised tools taken from a skip & failed to break into at least three cars before getting collared.
I’ll keep you updated with what happens, would be nice to see a positive outcome against this sort of scrotish thing.

[LosingGrip]

andrebar said:

Got one quote yesterday & that was almost what we paid for the car. I’m not going to faff around over a payout for what is a very diyable patch up job so I’ll just forward that & let the police deal with it. Can’t imagine this suspect has any means to pay anyway. He was evidently using improvised tools taken from a skip & failed to break into at least three cars before getting collared.
I’ll keep you updated with what happens, would be nice to see a positive outcome against this sort of scrotish thing.

Be worth submitting it still. Don't have to actually use the money to get it fixed.

The courts may award compensation. Even if it takes a while to get, it's better in your pocket.

If it's an out of court option then again, better in your pocket than theirs.

[cpszx]

When a scrote attacked our car with a wheelie bin because he had a row with his girlfriend nearby, the court ordered him to just pay back our insurance excess, not the full repair bill.

Received cheques for £1 or £2 at a time every few weeks or so, took ages.