Who we hand work to, and why

CityGrip Recovery describes itself as a 24/7 breakdown and recovery service, with vetted local recovery drivers positioned across every London borough and a fixed price agreed before anyone sets off, with no hidden fees. The work it lists covers car recovery and towing, van recovery up to 7.5 tonnes, jump starts and battery replacement, breakdown recovery and roadside assistance, accident recovery with winching, fuel delivery, flat tyre assistance, motorcycle, scooter and moped recovery, electric and hybrid vehicle recovery, police pound and council impound collection, and vehicle transport including long-distance towing. Its stated coverage runs across all London boroughs and postcodes, the Home Counties around them, and UK-wide long-distance recovery beyond that.

We are a motorway recovery business, so the hard shoulder, the smart motorway refuge and the slip road are the ground our own work is organised around. Plenty of calls do not belong there. A car that will not start on a residential street in Hackney, a van that needs moving off an estate road, a vehicle sitting in a council impound, a scooter down on a high street: those are urban jobs, and we pass them to CityGrip Recovery, which shares our phone number and the CityGrip brand as part of the same group. Its drivers are positioned borough by borough rather than along the motorway network. The boundary is simple: the motorway network and the trunk roads feeding it stay with us, city streets and pounds go to them.

If you are reading this from the hard shoulder, call us and stop reading. If the problem is somewhere else, on a borough street, in a car park, or in a pound, go to CityGrip Recovery and describe the situation as you found it. Ask for the fixed price before the driver sets off, because agreeing it in advance is how they say they work. Say what the vehicle is, electric, hybrid, a van, a scooter, so the right equipment comes out to it. And if the vehicle needs moving a long way rather than fixing where it stands, say that on the first call, because it is a transport job rather than a roadside repair.

CityGrip Accident Claims is a UK accident management business that coordinates the full non-fault claim file end to end. In practice that covers 24/7 accident recovery, vehicle storage at secure yards, repair management through approved garages, independent engineer inspection, screening for a replacement vehicle and credit hire, and communication with the third-party insurer on the driver’s behalf. They do not handle personal injury claims themselves; where an injury claim is appropriate they refer to authorised solicitors, and only with the driver’s explicit consent. There is no upfront cost to the driver, because the costs are recovered from the at-fault insurer rather than billed to the person who was hit, which is a claim against someone else’s liability rather than a free service. Their line is 0333 335 7686, answered 24/7.

They are part of the same group as us and share the CityGrip brand, so this is not an arm’s-length referral and we would rather write that down than leave you to find it out. What we hand over is the driver, once the car is off the motorway and somewhere safe. Recovery is where our work ends. Liability with the third-party insurer, storage while the car waits, an independent engineer’s view of the damage, repair through an approved garage, and the need screening before any replacement vehicle are all theirs. We are a recovery operator, not a claims handler, and we would be no use to you arguing liability on a claim file.

If your accident was not your fault, call us for the recovery first and ask for the claim to be passed on, or call them direct on 0333 335 7686 at any hour. Be clear about the condition attached to the money. A non-fault recovery costs you nothing because the bill goes to the at-fault driver’s insurer, not because anyone is giving it away, so if liability is disputed that position changes and you should be told at the outset rather than after the event. A replacement vehicle is screened against genuine need before any credit hire referral, and an injury claim only reaches a solicitor if you say so.

TowManVan is a separate company we have signed up with, and it describes itself as two things in one: an on-demand car recovery app that is also a man and van and house removals app. On the recovery side it lists jump starts, towing, breakdown assistance, fuel delivery, car lockouts and tyre changes. On the removals side it covers house moves, office relocations, student moves, single items and flat clearances. Its site states coverage across more than 800 UK postcodes, naming London, Manchester, Birmingham, Liverpool, Leeds, Bristol, Sheffield, Edinburgh, Glasgow and Newcastle. The stated model is fixed upfront pricing, DBS-checked operators, no membership requirement, 24/7 operation and booking in around 60 seconds, with dispatch inside 30 minutes.

Our own work starts and ends on the motorway network: hard shoulder, live lane, slip roads and service areas, where the priority is getting a vehicle and its occupants out of a dangerous place quickly. Two kinds of call fall outside that. The first is removals. A house move, an office relocation or a flat clearance is not a recovery job and we do not pretend otherwise, so those go to TowManVan. The second is the driver who would rather not phone anyone at all, wants an off-motorway job priced upfront and booked from their own phone, and does not want to join a membership scheme. That self-serve, app-first model is theirs, not ours, and the boundary stays clean: emergencies on the motorway stay with us.

One timing note before any of that is useful. TowManVan states that its app launches on 1 October 2026, and it publishes no phone number, so if you are reading this before that date, treat the service as not yet bookable rather than assuming there is another way in. After it launches: if you are stopped on a motorway, call us and do not start browsing, because that is an emergency and an app is the wrong tool for it. If the job is a move rather than a breakdown, go to TowManVan and describe the load, the access at both ends and the date. And check your postcode against their coverage before you plan around it, because the list they publish names specific cities.