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What Happens When a PCO Car Is Written Off
If your PCO car has been declared a total loss, two separate problems have to be solved before you can earn again: the money and the licence. This page covers the write-off categories, how your pre-accident value is set and challenged, what happens to rent-to-buy payments already made, and how TfL's rules limit what you can replace it with.
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Reviewed: Written & reviewed by: CityGrip Editorial Team (City Grip Ltd)Applies to: TfL-licensed private hire drivers in London
What happens when a PCO car is written off?
When a PCO car is written off, the insurer pays the pre-accident market value instead of repairing it, and the salvage is graded Cat A, B, S or N. Your TfL licence belongs to that specific vehicle and cannot move, so a replacement needs its own inspection and grant of licence, and if it is licensed for the first time it must be zero emission capable. If you rent or rent-to-buy, what happens to payments already made depends on your agreement wording, which most providers do not publish. Non-fault drivers may also claim loss of use and lost earnings, subject to liability and evidence.
Key points
- Since 1 January 2023, every private hire vehicle licensed by TfL for the first time must be zero emission capable and meet at least the Euro 6 standard.
- Zero emission capable means no more than 50g/km CO2 with at least 10 miles of zero-emission range, or no more than 75g/km CO2 with at least 20 miles.
- A vehicle already licensed by TfL must be no older than 10 years at the time it is re-licensed.
- A TfL private hire vehicle licence runs for 12 months and requires a fresh licensing inspection each year.
- Cat A and Cat B vehicles can never return to the road; Cat S and Cat N can be repaired and re-registered with the DVLA.
- The ABI Code of Practice for the Categorisation of Motor Vehicle Salvage was updated in May 2025 to cover electric and hybrid vehicles and high-voltage batteries.
- Under the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998, the licensee must notify TfL within 72 hours of a collision that materially affects the vehicle.
- TfL is consulting until 13 September 2026 on refusing a licence to any vehicle ever recorded as salvage, whether Category S or Category N.
- Standard GAP insurance commonly excludes hire and reward use; specialist private hire and taxi GAP policies are sold separately.
- Total loss valuations are assessed against motor trade guides such as Auto Trader, CAP and Glass's, which the Financial Ombudsman Service also uses.
Cat A, B, S and N: what each one means for a car that has to hold a TfL licence
An insurer declares a total loss when the cost of putting the car right, set against what the car was worth in the moment before the collision and what the wreck is worth as salvage, stops making commercial sense. The label that follows is a salvage category applied under the Association of British Insurers Code of Practice for the Categorisation of Motor Vehicle Salvage, which was updated in May 2025 to deal properly with electric and hybrid vehicles, high-voltage batteries, megacasting and the contamination risks that come with water and fire damage. That update matters more to London private hire than to almost any other group of drivers, because TfL's own licensing rules have pushed the fleet hard towards hybrids and full electric vehicles.
Category A is the end of the road in the most literal sense. The entire vehicle, including every component, has to be crushed, and nothing at all may be reused. Category B is only slightly different: the body shell must be destroyed, but serviceable parts can be harvested for use in other road-going vehicles. Neither can ever be licensed, insured, driven or plated again, in London or anywhere else, so if your car falls into either band there is nothing left to argue about on the repair side. Your attention should move immediately to the valuation, to what the agreement says about who owns the loss, and to getting a licensed replacement in front of you.
Category S and Category N are the ones that create real confusion for private hire drivers. Cat S means the damage reached the structure of the vehicle: chassis rails, crumple zones, suspension mounting points, the safety cage. Cat N means the damage was non-structural, which can still mean an expensive write-off caused by electrics, water ingress, deployed airbags or a damaged high-voltage battery pack. Both can legally be repaired and returned to the road once the DVLA has been notified. What drivers miss is that legal on the road and acceptable to TfL are not the same test. Where a vehicle has carried a write-off category, TfL wants to understand the damage and the repair method before the car can proceed through licensing, and its vehicle policy team may inspect the repair itself.
That gap may be about to widen. TfL is currently consulting on refusing a London taxi or private hire licence to any vehicle that has ever been recorded as salvage, whether the marker is Category S or Category N, on the stated basis that only structurally sound vehicles should be operating in the licensed fleet. The consultation runs until 13 September 2026 and no decision has been announced, so nothing here is settled and you should check the position at the time you buy. The direction of travel is the point, though: taking a cheap repaired Cat S or Cat N car as your replacement is a licensing gamble, and buying back your own damaged car as salvage to repair and re-plate is a bigger one. Treat salvage as a licensing decision, not only a financial one.
How your pre-accident market value is set, and why a working PCO car gets undervalued
The settlement in a total loss is the pre-accident market value: what your car was worth on the open market in the moment before the collision, in the condition it was genuinely in. It is not what you paid for it, not what you still owe on it, and not what a comparable plated car costs you today. Insurers reach that figure by running the registration through motor trade valuation guides such as Auto Trader, CAP and Glass's, applying adjustments for age, specification, mileage and condition, then usually layering on the engineer's assessment. The first offer is normally a desk exercise produced from data. Nobody who has ever sat in your car has priced it.
This is where private hire work costs you twice. A PCO car covers in a single year the mileage a private motorist covers in three or four, and the guides apply a mileage adjustment that pulls the figure down hard. What the guides do not automatically credit are the things that make a well-run private hire car worth more than its odometer suggests: a full documented service history, because the vehicle is a working asset rather than a weekend car; recent tyres and brakes; a recent hybrid or high-voltage battery health check; a factory specification chosen deliberately for private hire work; and a general condition standard maintained precisely because the car has to pass a TfL licensing inspection every twelve months. Those are legitimate value arguments and they are yours to make.
There is a second argument drivers often get wrong, so it is worth being precise about it. The TfL licence is not a bolt-on that adds a fixed sum to the car's value, because the licence belongs to that specific vehicle and dies with it. What is properly part of the valuation is the vehicle's specification and eligibility: a compliant, already-licensable vehicle sits in a narrower and more sought-after slice of the used market than a general family car of the same age and mileage, and genuinely comparable adverts reflect that. Evidence it from live listings for the same model, variant, age, mileage band and specification in the London market at the date of loss, rather than from an opinion about what a plate is worth.
If the offer looks low, ask for it in writing: which guides were used, what figure each one returned, what adjustments were applied for mileage and condition, and a copy of the engineer's report. An offer sitting at or near the highest of the trade guide figures is hard to shift and you should be told that honestly. An offer sitting below the guides, or marked down for damage or wear that was not there before the collision, needs supporting evidence, and where the insurer cannot produce it the offer should move. This is a negotiation conducted on evidence rather than a fixed price, and no result can be promised at the outset.
PCO DRIVERS
03
Section 3 of the walkthrough.
What happens to rent-to-buy equity and the payments you have already made
This is the question London drivers ask most often and the one the market answers least. In a rent-to-buy or flexi-own arrangement your weekly payment is doing two jobs at once: paying for the use of the vehicle now, and building towards eventually owning it. Providers advertise that second part hard, because it is the whole appeal. What almost none of them publish anywhere on their public websites is what happens to that accrued position if the vehicle is destroyed before the term completes. We looked for it. The honest answer is that this is not an industry-wide rule you can be told over the phone: it is a clause, and the only document that gives you your answer is the agreement you personally signed.
What providers do publish, and what you should read as a warning, is how early termination works. It is common for the wording to say that if you end the plan early you may lose the ownership benefit and any payments already made towards the car. A total loss ends the plan early by force rather than by choice. Unless your agreement contains a specific total loss clause saying otherwise, the risk is that the vehicle side of the deal simply collapses and your accrued position collapses with it, because the insurance settlement is paid to whoever owns the vehicle and holds the policy, and in most of these structures that is the provider and not you.
The picture gets harder if the collision was your fault. Where the provider supplies the insurance and recovers its cost through your weekly payment, a fault claim can leave you liable for the balance of the annual premium as well as the excess, on top of losing both the car and the equity, and you may still be treated as owing sums under the agreement while the insurer works through the claim. That combination is what turns one bad afternoon into a year of debt. It is also the strongest practical reason to establish who was at fault clearly and early, to preserve dashcam footage and witness details immediately, and to get third-party liability admitted where the facts support it.
So take twenty minutes and find four things in your agreement before you agree to anything on the phone: the total loss or constructive total loss clause, the termination clause and what it says about sums already paid, who the insured party is and who receives any settlement, and whether GAP or shortfall protection was included, offered or declined. If the wording is unclear, ask the provider to confirm their position in writing rather than accepting a verbal answer from whoever picks up. Our page on PCO car hire and rent-to-buy accidents at /pco-car-hire-accident covers who claims what in general terms. This page deals with the specific moment the vehicle stops existing.
If you rent your PCO car weekly and it is declared a total loss
On a straight weekly rental the loss of the vehicle itself is not your loss, because you never owned it. The rental company owns the car, insures it and receives the settlement, and the argument about pre-accident value is theirs to have with the insurer. Your exposure is different and it is mostly contractual: the excess, any damage recharge, any admin or recovery fee, whether the weekly rent stops on the date of the accident or continues until the vehicle is formally written off and off-hired, and what happens to your deposit. Those dates matter enormously. Drivers regularly discover that rent has continued to run on a car that has been sitting in a compound for weeks.
Get the off-hire confirmed in writing and get it dated. Ask the rental company on what date the hire ended, whether any further weekly charges will be raised, when the deposit will be returned and against what deductions. If the accident was not your fault, the fact that you did not own the car does not remove your own losses: you still lost the ability to work, you may still have paid rent covering a period when the vehicle was undrivable, and you may still have paid an excess out of your own pocket. Those are your heads of claim, separate from the vehicle's value, and they are recoverable in principle from the at-fault insurer subject to liability being established and the losses being evidenced.
The urgent job on a rental is replacement, because a rental driver has no asset to wait on and no settlement coming their way. Every day without a licensed vehicle is simply a day of zero income with the bills unchanged. Ask your provider straight away whether they will move you onto another licensed vehicle from their own fleet and on what terms, and in parallel find out whether you are eligible for a like-for-like licensed replacement through the non-fault route, so that you are not paying twice for the same week. Do not sit and wait for the claim to resolve before starting. Our general guidance on sourcing a compliant licensed replacement is at /pco-replacement-car.
Your replacement has to be licensable, and that is what really limits your options
Before you start shopping, be clear about what you are shopping for. A TfL private hire vehicle licence attaches to one specific vehicle, identified by its registration, and it is issued with discs for that car. It does not travel with you. When the vehicle is destroyed the licence has nothing left to attach to, so a replacement car has to go through its own application, its own licensing inspection and its own grant of licence before you can lawfully carry a passenger in it. Separately, under the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 the licensee must notify TfL within 72 hours of a collision that materially affects the vehicle. Do that even when the car is obviously finished, and keep proof that you did.
Then there is the emissions rule, and it is the one that reshapes the entire decision. Since 1 January 2023, every private hire vehicle licensed by TfL for the first time must be zero emission capable and meet at least the Euro 6 standard. Zero emission capable means the vehicle emits no more than 50g/km of CO2 and can be driven for at least 10 miles with no exhaust emissions, or emits no more than 75g/km and can manage at least 20 miles with none. Fully electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles satisfy the requirement outright. A cheap ordinary petrol or diesel car, however mechanically sound and however tempting at your settlement figure, cannot be plated for the first time in London today.
The second rule is age. A vehicle already licensed by TfL must be no older than 10 years at the point it is re-licensed, and the licence itself runs for twelve months with a fresh inspection every year. Put both rules together and the trap becomes visible. If you buy an already-licensed older car to stretch your settlement, you are buying a limited number of re-licensing cycles before the age limit ends its working life, and when it drops out you are back in the zero emission capable market anyway, only with less money. If you buy into that market now, the purchase price is higher but the remaining licensed life is considerably longer. That is the genuine trade-off and it deserves a deliberate decision.
Practically, this means your replacement search is not a search for a car at your settlement figure. It is a search for a car at your settlement figure that is either already licensed and comfortably inside the age limit, or eligible to be licensed for the first time as a zero emission capable vehicle, and that will pass a TfL inspection as it stands rather than after work. Check the official emissions figure and electric range for the exact variant rather than the model, because trim levels and battery sizes differ and a near-miss on the threshold is a failed application. Check service and MOT history properly. Then build in the cost and, more importantly, the dead time of the licensing inspection itself.
06PCO DRIVERSKey takeaway
The settlement gap, lost earnings and why speed beats squeezing the last few hundred pounds
Here is the structural unfairness sitting at the heart of a PCO total loss. The insurer owes you the market value of the car you had. What you actually need is the cost of getting back into a compliant, plated, working vehicle, and those two figures are frequently not the same number. Your car carried private hire mileage and was valued accordingly, downwards. The replacement has to be young enough or clean enough to be licensed, which means shopping in a narrower and more expensive slice of the same market. Add the licence application and grant fees, the inspection, hire and reward insurance on a new vehicle and any deposit, and the gap widens again before you have carried a single passenger.
There is no mechanism inside a motor claim that closes that gap by itself, and any firm implying otherwise is overselling. The product designed for exactly this is GAP or shortfall insurance, which pays the difference between the settlement figure and the purchase price or the outstanding finance balance. Be aware that ordinary GAP policies commonly exclude hire and reward use altogether, so a policy bought when the car was a private vehicle may not respond at all once it was working as a PHV. Specialist private hire and taxi GAP cover does exist and is sold separately by specialist providers. If you already hold it, claim on it. If you do not, this is the argument for buying it on the replacement.
Lost income is a legitimate head of claim for a non-fault driver, and it is the one drivers evidence worst. It is not what you feel you would have earned in a good week. It is what you can prove you lost, net of the costs you did not incur while off the road, such as fuel or charging and any rental or finance payment that genuinely stopped. Start the file on day one rather than reconstructing it later. Download your weekly earnings summaries from every operator you drive for, going back at least as many weeks as you intend to claim, keep your expense records, and keep proof of the exact dates the vehicle was unavailable. Recovery always depends on liability and on the quality of that evidence.
All of which explains why sequencing matters more than squeezing the last few hundred pounds. A replacement vehicle in a non-fault claim is not open-ended: the courts look at whether the period of hire was reasonable, and a claimant is generally expected to keep a replacement only until they have been put in funds and have had a fair opportunity to source another car, with a duty to mitigate running throughout. A driver who waits passively for the settlement before starting to look can find the later part of the hire period challenged. So start the replacement search while the valuation is still being argued, keep a written record of what you viewed and when, and be ready to move the day the money lands. Eligibility for any replacement vehicle depends on liability.
How CityGrip challenges an undervalued total loss offer
CityGrip is an accident management company. We are not an insurer and not a law firm. On a total loss we handle the parts of the job a working driver has no time for while trying to earn: recovering the vehicle, putting it into secure storage so charges do not spiral at a roadside compound, arranging an independent engineer's inspection and report, and handling the third-party insurer's correspondence so you are not sitting on hold between jobs. We work with car and van drivers. We do not handle personal injury in-house: if you have been hurt in the collision, we can refer you to an authorised legal partner, and only ever with your separate written consent.
The challenge itself is built on evidence rather than volume. That means an independent engineer's assessment of the vehicle and its pre-accident condition; the trade guide positions with the adjustments made visible, so we can see exactly where and why the insurer marked your car down; and a pack of genuinely comparable live adverts for the same model, variant, age, mileage band and specification, sourced for the London market at the date of loss rather than months afterwards. Documented service history, recent replacement components, battery or hybrid system health evidence and the condition standard the vehicle had to meet to keep passing its annual licensing inspection all go into the same file.
We then put that to the insurer as a reasoned, itemised counter-position rather than a complaint, and we keep the paper trail intact throughout. Where an insurer will not move despite the evidence, the escalation route runs through their formal complaints process and then to the Financial Ombudsman Service, which assesses motor valuations against the same trade guides and expects an offer that sits below them to be supported by evidence. We will also tell you honestly when an offer is defensible, because chasing another few hundred pounds for six weeks while you are not earning is usually the worse deal by a distance.
Alongside the money, we work the licensing side in parallel, because that is what actually gets you back to earning. That means confirming what you can legally replace the vehicle with under the TfL rules as they stand, helping you avoid buying something that will not license, and, where you are eligible, arranging a like-for-like licensed replacement so you can keep working while the total loss is negotiated. Replacement vehicle provision, credit hire and support for a loss of earnings claim always depend on liability and eligibility, and nobody can promise you an outcome at the start. What we can do is make sure the offer on the table has been tested against evidence rather than accepted by default. Our main guide for London private hire drivers is at /pco-accident-claims.
Step by step
What to do next
- 1Report the collision and notify TfL within 72 hours. Report the accident to the police where required, tell your insurer or your rental provider, and notify TfL. Under the Private Hire Vehicles (London) Act 1998 the licensee must inform TfL within 72 hours of a collision that materially affects the vehicle. Keep proof of the notification. Also tell your operator that you are off the road, so your account status is not affected while you are unable to accept work.
- 2Get the vehicle recovered and into proper secure storage. Do not leave the car accumulating daily charges in a roadside compound while you decide what to do. Arrange recovery to secure storage where the vehicle can be inspected properly and where the storage position is documented. If the car is drivable but unsafe or unlicensable in its current state, stop using it for private hire work: carrying passengers in a vehicle that no longer meets the licensing standard is not a risk worth taking.
- 3Read your own agreement before you agree to anything. Find the total loss or constructive total loss clause, the early termination clause and what it says about payments already made, who the insured party is and who receives the settlement, the excess and any damage recharge, and whether GAP or shortfall cover was included or offered. Ask the provider to confirm their position in writing rather than accepting a verbal answer. This single step decides most of what you can and cannot recover.
- 4Ask for the engineer's report and the basis of the valuation. Request in writing which trade guides were used, the figure each one returned, every adjustment applied for mileage, specification and condition, and a copy of the engineer's report. You cannot challenge a number you have not seen the workings for. If deductions have been made for damage or wear that predates nothing and was not present before the collision, that is where the offer is most likely to move.
- 5Build your own valuation evidence pack. Collect live adverts for the same model, variant, age, mileage band and specification in the London market at the date of loss, not national averages and not months later. Add your full service history, invoices for recent tyres, brakes or battery work, MOT history, and any hybrid or high-voltage battery health report. Photograph the interior and exterior condition. Comparable evidence carries more weight than any assertion about what the car was worth to you.
- 6Start the licensed replacement search immediately, in parallel. Do not wait for the settlement before looking. Check whether the vehicle you are considering is already licensed and comfortably inside the 10 year re-licensing limit, or is eligible for first-time licensing as a zero emission capable vehicle meeting Euro 6. Verify the CO2 figure and zero-emission range for the exact variant. Factor in the licensing fees, the inspection appointment and the lead time, because that is unpaid time.
- 7Evidence your lost earnings from day one. Download weekly earnings summaries from every operator you drive for, covering the period before the accident as well as during it, so the comparison is credible. Keep records of fuel or charging costs, rental or finance payments and any costs that genuinely stopped, because a loss of earnings claim is assessed net. Keep proof of the dates the vehicle was off the road. Recovery depends on liability being established and on this evidence.
- 8Deal with the licence and salvage admin properly. The TfL licence and discs belong to the destroyed vehicle and cannot be moved to a replacement, so confirm with TfL what needs to be surrendered and whether anything is refundable in your circumstances. Before agreeing to buy back salvage, think about licensing rather than only price: a Cat S or Cat N marker creates a real licensing hurdle in London and TfL is currently consulting on tightening that further.
Related PCO pages
PCO accident claims hub →
The full picture for TfL-licensed London private hire drivers.
Accident in a hired PCO car →Who claims what when you rent or rent-to-buy your vehicle.
PCO replacement car →A licensed, plated replacement so you can keep working.
PCO loss of earnings →Evidencing and recovering self-employed income.
PCO courtesy car →What you are offered versus what you are entitled to.
TfL licence & accidents →Notification duties and licence risk after an incident.
Minicab & PHV hub →The wider UK private hire vertical.
Frequently asked questions
- What does a Cat S or Cat N marker mean for a car that needs a TfL private hire licence?
- Cat S means structural damage and Cat N means non-structural damage. Both can legally be repaired, re-registered with the DVLA and returned to the road, but that is a different test from being acceptable to TfL. Where a vehicle has carried an insurance write-off category, TfL wants to understand the damage sustained and the repair method used before the car proceeds through licensing, and its vehicle policy team may inspect the repair. TfL is also consulting, until 13 September 2026, on refusing a licence to any vehicle ever recorded as salvage, whether Cat S or Cat N. No decision has been announced, so check the position before you buy.
- Can I buy back my own PCO car as salvage and repair it?
- If it is Cat A or Cat B, no. Cat A vehicles must be crushed entirely and Cat B body shells must be destroyed, so neither can ever return to the road. With Cat S or Cat N it is technically possible, and buying back the salvage reduces the settlement by the salvage value. Think hard first. You would be spending money repairing a car that then has to satisfy TfL on the standard of the repair before it can be licensed, at a time when TfL is consulting on excluding salvage-recorded vehicles altogether. That is a lot of risk to carry while you are not earning.
- Will the insurer pay what I paid for my PCO car?
- No. A total loss settlement is the pre-accident market value: what the vehicle was worth on the open market immediately before the collision, in the condition it was actually in, taking account of its age, specification and mileage. It is not the purchase price, not the outstanding finance balance and not the cost of a plated replacement today. That is precisely why a gap so often opens up for private hire drivers, and why GAP or shortfall insurance exists as a separate product to bridge it.
- What happens to my rent-to-buy payments if the car is written off?
- It depends entirely on the clause in your specific agreement, and we would rather say that plainly than guess. Providers generally do not publish what happens to accrued equity on a total loss. What they do publish is that ending a plan early can mean losing the ownership benefit and any payments already made towards the car, and a write-off ends the plan early by force. In most of these structures the provider owns the vehicle and holds the policy, so the settlement is paid to them. Find the total loss and termination clauses, and ask for the provider's position in writing.
- I rent my PCO car weekly. Do I keep paying rent after a write-off?
- That is a contractual question, and it is one drivers get caught by. Ask the rental company in writing for the exact date the hire ended, whether any further weekly charges will be raised, when your deposit will be returned and against what deductions. Rent continuing to run on a car sitting in a compound is a common and expensive surprise. You do not own the vehicle so the settlement is not yours, but if the accident was not your fault your own losses, such as an excess you paid, rent paid for an unusable period and lost earnings, are separate heads of claim subject to liability and evidence.
- Do I have to replace it with an electric or hybrid car?
- If the replacement is being licensed by TfL for the first time, yes in practical terms. Since 1 January 2023 all PHVs licensed for the first time must be zero emission capable and meet at least Euro 6. Zero emission capable means no more than 50g/km of CO2 with at least 10 miles of zero-emission driving, or no more than 75g/km with at least 20 miles. Full electric and hydrogen fuel cell vehicles qualify outright. If instead you buy a car that already holds a TfL licence, that vehicle keeps its existing position but must still be under 10 years old at re-licensing.
- Can I move my PCO plate to the replacement car?
- No. The private hire vehicle licence attaches to one specific vehicle and is issued with discs for that car, so it cannot be transferred to a different vehicle when yours is destroyed. Your replacement needs its own application, its own licensing inspection and its own grant of licence before you can lawfully carry passengers in it. Budget for the fees and, more importantly, for the lead time on the inspection appointment, because those are days you are not earning. Confirm with TfL what should be surrendered for the destroyed vehicle and whether anything is refundable in your circumstances.
- Can I claim loss of earnings while my PCO car is written off?
- If you were not at fault, lost earnings are a legitimate head of claim, but recovery depends on liability being established and on the quality of your evidence. It is assessed on what you can prove you lost, net of costs you did not incur while off the road, rather than on an estimate of a good week. Download weekly earnings summaries from every operator you drive for, covering a comparable period before the accident as well as the period claimed, and keep expense records and proof of the exact dates the vehicle was unavailable. No firm can promise you an outcome in advance.
- How long can I keep a replacement vehicle while the total loss is negotiated?
- Not indefinitely. In a non-fault claim the test the courts apply is whether the hire period was reasonable. A claimant is generally expected to keep a replacement until they have been put in funds and have had a fair opportunity to source another vehicle, with a duty to mitigate running throughout, so a driver who waits passively before starting to look can find the later part of the period challenged. Practically, start your replacement search while the valuation is still being argued, keep a written record of what you viewed and when, and move quickly once the settlement arrives. Eligibility always depends on liability.
- What if the settlement will not cover a compliant licensed replacement?
- That gap is real and there is no mechanism inside the motor claim that closes it automatically. The settlement reflects what your car was worth, complete with its private hire mileage, while your replacement must be young enough or clean enough to be licensed, which is a narrower and dearer part of the market. The product built for this is GAP or shortfall insurance. Be careful, because ordinary GAP policies commonly exclude hire and reward use, so a policy bought when the car was private may not respond. Specialist private hire and taxi GAP cover is available separately and is worth arranging on the replacement.
- Do I have to accept the insurer's first total loss offer?
- No. A first offer is usually a desk exercise generated from trade guide data, and it is a starting position rather than a final figure. Ask for the guides used, the figures returned, every adjustment applied and the engineer's report, then answer it with comparable live adverts for the same variant, age, mileage and specification in the London market at the date of loss. If it cannot be resolved, the escalation route is the insurer's formal complaints process and then the Financial Ombudsman Service, which weighs valuations against the same trade guides. Be realistic too: an offer near the top of the guides may already be fair.
- Does CityGrip deal with injuries from the accident as well?
- No, not in-house. CityGrip is an accident management company handling recovery, secure storage, independent engineer inspection, repair coordination where a vehicle is repairable, replacement vehicle arrangements and correspondence with the third-party insurer, for car and van drivers. We do not handle personal injury ourselves. If you have been injured, we can refer you to an authorised legal partner, and we will only ever do that with your separate written consent. You are never obliged to accept a referral, and the total loss and replacement vehicle side of your case is handled independently of it.
Important notice for PCO drivers
Liability remains subject to the at-fault driver's insurer's assessment and the available evidence. Replacement vehicle, credit hire, recovery, storage, repair and loss of earnings support are subject to eligibility, the evidential record and reasonable need. We do not provide legal advice and we do not handle personal injury in-house: injury enquiries are referred only with your separate written consent to authorised legal or regulated partners. Information about TfL private hire licensing, Zero Emission Capable standards, vehicle age limits and notification duties is general guidance, not legal or licensing advice, and the position applying to your own licence at the relevant date will govern. Rental, rent-to-buy and finance terms vary between providers: always check the specific clauses in your own agreement.
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