Continuous insurance enforcement comes into effect in January 2011. From then on you must either have your car SORNED or insured or be liable for a £80 - £1000 fine.
Another ill-thought out scheme from the inept DVLA which will help them raise revenue from the law abiding majority...
From January once your insurance has run out and you don\'t renew you must submit your tax disc and SORN the car and the reapply for a disc once you are insured again. If you don\'t it\'s an automatic fixed penalty.
Doesn\'t matter if it\'s kept on private property / in a garage etc - it must be either insured or sorned. The only exceptions are those which are \'sorn exempt\' - ones that have been off the road continuously since 1988
Unless your tax and insurance both run out on the same day you\'ll end up losing money.
You can only get full months worth of refund so if you send off your tax disc on or after the 1st of the month you\'ll lose that months refund. Plus they charge you a £7 administration fee which is taken out of the refunded amount.
If your tax runs out less than a month after your insurance lapses you\'ll end up having to pay £7 to cancel your tax and sorn the car as you won\'t get any refund for less than a months tax.
There are 2 obvious flaws in the plan straight away....
1. The people who drive uninsured are not the sort of people who will give a f**k about driving a vehicle that\'s sorned so they\'ll just sorn it to avoid the immediate fixed penalty then drive about uninsured as before.
2. Apparently the DVLA are hoping to catch the uninsured by a large scale rollout of ANPR cameras.
These will only flag up a car if the database says it\'s uninsured.... so if, for example, someone had 9 points and didn\'t want to pay the insurance, they could still drive their wifes / girlfriends / mates car even though it isn\'t insured for them.
As long as there is insurance in place on the car for someone, the camera won\'t flag it although the actual driver might not be covered and is therefore uninsured.
I agree that uninsured drivers are a scourge but all this is going to do is penalise the people who do play by the rules by making life more awkward and by catching them in the revenue raising net yet again.
or people will still just drive around on cloned plates/fake taxs!
Most people stagger insurance and tax to ease the financial burden of it all in one hit, people will just have to adapt to buy insurance and tax at the same time,
it will only really become a problem more when people come to sell the car and claim the tax back?
Looks to me that the Government actually is encouraging people to commit more Road traffic offences, or setting people up to fail or both....bloody "expense" thieves...
its just another way of catching the motorist out of his hard earned money yet again
Quote from: RobMatthews;735039it will only really become a problem more when people come to sell the car and claim the tax back?
yes it will, if your insurance runs out, and you want to sell the car, you have to hand the tax back...meaning test drives etc are out of the question.
We all know the motorist is the easiest target going as we all need cars for one reason or another.
I see fuel jumped 3p today too
Quote from: Dan Norton;735065yes it will, if your insurance runs out, and you want to sell the car, you have to hand the tax back...meaning test drives etc are out of the question.
They would already be out of the question, as your insurance would have expired.
No insurance is a bigger crime than no tax!
If you intend to keep driving your car, you keep your insurance and tax up to date, so no worries.
If you have the car off the road for some reason, you still want to keep up the insurance on it anyway...and if it\'s for a long time, you might as well sorn it at some point.
disregarding test drives, at the moment if you buy a car and it\'s got tax and mot, you just make a phone call to your broker, arrange cover to start immediately and you\'re sorted.... hand over the money and drive it away.
In future you will have to tax it as well and wait for the disc to arrive before you can hit the road or risk getting done for failing to display, even if you tax it online ( assuming the insurance companies update the insurance database that quickly.)
It takes away more of our flexibility to conduct our lives and business as we wish unless or course you\'re a person who isn\'t worried about driving around uninsured........ in which case it\'s business as usual!
Quote from: Ian65;735234disregarding test drives, at the moment if you buy a car and it\'s got tax and mot, you just make a phone call to your broker, arrange cover to start immediately and you\'re sorted.... hand over the money and drive it away.
This will still be the case
Quote from: Ian65;735234In future you will have to tax it as well and wait for the disc to arrive before you can hit the road or risk getting done for failing to display, even if you tax it online ( assuming the insurance companies update the insurance database that quickly.)
This has always been the case when buying an untaxed vehicle
Quote from: Ian65;735234It takes away more of our flexibility to conduct our lives and business as we wish unless or course you\'re a person who isn\'t worried about driving around uninsured........ in which case it\'s business as usual!
Like most things, it only really affects law obiding citizens, sadly...
I agree there will be times it will become more difficult, I\'m not arguing that fact, just wish to point out that most of these things will really be the same :)
Quote from: Marcrs;735250This will still be the case
no it won\'t..... if you buy a car from a private seller and they have already tranferred their insurance onto their new vehicle, the car for sale will be uninsured and will have to be sorned. This being the case, the excise licence will have to be surrendered and a new one will need to be obtained before you can drive it away.
Liability will remain with the registered keeper and person filing the sorn notice until the vehicle is taxed and insured. I certainly wouldn\'t let anyone take the car away until I had confirmation that the documentation was in place and leave myself open to being liable for a fixed penalty.
In the past, no excise licence was a \'found committing\' offence.... the vehicle had to be seen on a public highway for the offence to be complete.
that is no longer the case and a camera or database check is sufficient.
Quote from: Marcrs;735250This has always been the case when buying an untaxed vehicle
correct.... when buying an untaxed vehicle but my point is that there will now be a larger percentage of vehicles offered for sale that are untaxed and thus more inconvenience for the buyer.
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yet another Law that the DVLA have brought in to play thats rediculous. almost as rediculous as the 10 year lisence renewal that costs you £20 each time.
How can these people get away with it all.
It really is getting rediculous.
and i am surprised there has not been a massive mailer to all motorists from the DVLA to inform us all. Either i didnt get that memo or its another stealth law they was hoping we didne find out about
Quote from: Ian65;735264no it won\'t..... if you buy a car from a private seller and they have already tranferred their insurance onto their new vehicle, the car for sale will be uninsured and will have to be sorned. This being the case, the excise licence will have to be surrendered and a new one will need to be obtained before you can drive it away.
er...in which case the vehicle won\'t be taxed...
if the vehicle is taxed and MOTd, you\'ll still be able to ring your insurance company, cover it, and drive it. The same as before...
I will keep my car insured until it is sold, and therefore it could be taxed too.
Why would I want to transfer my insurance before the car has been sold, and risk it getting stolen etc whilst not covered?
When you buy another car, you can keep your old one covered for a short while for very little cost ;)
I have many times swapped my insurance to a new car leaving my old car unisured untill it is sold. Otherwise I\'d end up with £25 (or what ever the charge is this week) charge twice over from my insureance company to cover the admin costs.
never heard of this mines taxed stuck in the garage uninsured (no intention of driving)
Quote from: TiddlesRX7;735269I have many times swapped my insurance to a new car leaving my old car unisured untill it is sold. Otherwise I\'d end up with £25 (or what ever the charge is this week) charge twice over from my insureance company to cover the admin costs.
as have lots of other people, myself included.
Insurance is legalised robbery as it is without forking out more than is neccessary.
I wonder how garages and traders with trade policies will get on with this?
Are individual cars specified on the policy?
Quote from: peterwolds;735270never heard of this mines taxed stuck in the garage uninsured (no intention of driving)
there you go then Pete, you\'ll have to cancel the tax even though it\'s locked in the garage.
If the sun comes out and you fancy taking it out for a drive, instead of just making a quick phone call to your broker or fixing up cover online, you\'ll have to wait for the new tax disc to arrive too ( by which time the rain will be back!)
As I say, it removes some flexibility from car ownership.
This hasn\'t been widely publicised and lots of people are going to get caught out.
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err i think you guys are forgetting that you can obtain a Tax disc from the post office so there is no real need to a drematic delay, All be it alloyingly we can only buy tax for 6 or 12 month periods
Unless of course its after closing time or after lunch time sat. Its basically a load of crap and a incovenience for the nation.
Are you sure it will be this month?
http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/OwningAVehicle/Motorinsurance/DG_067639 (http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/Motoring/OwningAVehicle/Motorinsurance/DG_067639)
This suggests just sometime in 2011, and a quick trawl off google only shows various forums saying Jan 2011?
Either way its a f**king stupid idea. As said it will just punish those trying to be law abiding and make the act of changing vehicles more awkward.
I can\'t remember where I read it now.... it is coming though pretty soon and although we will live with it, it\'s just more hoops for us to jump through and more money to shell out.
cool, so with this and the rise in fuel costs, insurance premium tax and road tax in mind it\'s a lot cheaper for me to just drive uninsured and untaxed and take the fine when i get it, stealing petrol on my cloned plates as i go.
awesome :)
I can see the Pros and Cons to this law, but its been brought about because of the large number of people buying car that has tax on it not bothering to insure straight away it so at a quick glance by an officer on the road it appears the car driven on the road is legal.
Plenty of drivers will drive off on the day they bought the car with no insurance intending to insure it in a couple of days time go off and have accident on the day of purchase, these are actual facts.
I work in the insurance industry and the large number of accidents because of uninsured drivers is rife, the Government had to try something to address it. So if you are buying a car that is uninsured and SORN it forces the buyer to insure the car to get the tax disc.
There are loads of cars parked on Public roads, I agree not being driven, with tax but with no insurance, hence it will force these people to place them in private property or garages. If your car being kept on a public road parked up uninsured gets hit by a drunk driver or sober driver, or your parked car gets hit from behind which then impacts a parked car in front of yours, you will probably get done as well.
Yes it is inconvience to the normal law abiding citizen as it will be a few days before they can pick up a car they have bought that has be SORNED to get a tax disc.
Also if you get pulled without insurance you most likely have to leave the car on the side of the road and arrange your car to be towed as the Police wont let you drive of in it if caught.
The SORN only applies to the previous owner - as soon as you take posession it no longer applies, so you need to Tax it or Sorn it in your name.
Surely, if you buy a car that has no tax, and you drive it home, and "back tax" it to the beginning of the month in which you bought the car...you haven\'t actually done anything wrong - apart from \'failure to display\' on the way home...
There always used to be some discretion used in these cases - I was stopped once on the way home in my new car, and had all the paperwork in my pocket, all signed and dated the same day, and was let off with a "make sure you tax it" - it made sense, it was a Sunday, so I had no way of taxing it that day.
Of course you could argue that I could have left a deposit on the car, insured it, taxed it in the week, and collected it the following weekend. And you\'d be right...and I guess that will be the only way to do it legally...unless the Police are going to be sensible... :)
Quote from: Ian65;735274there you go then Pete, you\'ll have to cancel the tax even though it\'s locked in the garage.
If the sun comes out and you fancy taking it out for a drive, instead of just making a quick phone call to your broker or fixing up cover online, you\'ll have to wait for the new tax disc to arrive too ( by which time the rain will be back!)
As I say, it removes some flexibility from car ownership.
This hasn\'t been widely publicised and lots of people are going to get caught out.
.
decided to insure & got a good deal from adrian flux who beat peter best used last year comfortably - result :driving
Quote from: Marcrs;735567Surely, if you buy a car that has no tax, and you drive it home, and "back tax" it to the beginning of the month in which you bought the car...you haven\'t actually done anything wrong - apart from \'failure to display\' on the way home...
That would seem to be the sensible answer wouldn\'t it but unfortunately you would still be committing the offence as at the time the vehicle was on the road, there was not excise licence in place for it irrespective of whether the duty is later paid retrospectively. This would be mitigation only should they decide to serve process on you.
The only way around it would be to tax the vehicle online before you collect it so it\'s on the database as taxed and then drive it home.
You would still be committing an offence of \'failing to display\' but in reality, this offence is treated as an \'also ran\' meaning that if the car turns out to be taxed and legal in every other respect they don\'t pursue you for failing to display. If it turns out to be untaxed or has con and use offences then you get done for everything including the failing to display.
Discretion is down to the individual who stops you. If he\'s a b****** or is having a bad day, he\'ll probably do you , where as another plod may approach it differently and not report you.
Of course, APNR cameras don\'t have discretion!
yes, a separate rant I know, but that\'s my biggest problem with cameras - they have no discretion...
34mph outside a school - 3 points....sort of fair enough
79mph on a deserted motorway at 5am - 3 points...why? A copper at the side of the road would most probably let you drive past...
ANPR is the same, and relies on insurance companies and DVLA getting all their information correct and up to date...hmmmm...
Quote from: Ian65;735599The only way around it would be to tax the vehicle online before you collect it so it\'s on the database as taxed and then drive it home.
Can you tax online if you don\'t have the code off a tax renewal reminder letter?
Quote from: AMH;735610Can you tax online if you don\'t have the code off a tax renewal reminder letter?
you can use the reference off the V5 instead but to tax online you\'ll need the cooperation of the seller and trust them to forward the disc because you should only use the on-line service if you\'re already the registered keeper and have a V5 in your name. The new disc will be posted to them.
It all sounds like too much trouble really doesn\'t it?!
Think I\'ll just stick with the RX7 for the next 30 odd years!
or I know its might sound strange, just Tax it at the post office all you need is the Green bit of the V5,MOt cert, and cover note\\insurance certificate
Thanks Ian,
Quote from: BlitzBoy;735623or I know its might sound strange, just Tax it at the post office all you need is the Green bit of the V5,MOt cert, and cover note\\insurance certificate
That\'s the issue - my friend has insured a car but is waiting for the paperwork to come through, she\'s worried she\'ll get stopped for having no tax but if she can do it online I\'ll tell her.
So just to clear this up in my head, if a car is declared SORN and is NOT insured then it\'s ok? It\'s only if it\'s NOT insured and NOT declared SORN that you\'d get a fine.
Quote from: Bobbit;735629So just to clear this up in my head, if a car is declared SORN and is NOT insured then it\'s ok? It\'s only if it\'s NOT insured and NOT declared SORN that you\'d get a fine.
correct
Makes sure if the car is SORN its in a garage or private property
I guess the same as the SORN concept, this is to stop the motorist who doesnt seem to bothered with about tax or insurance, most likely even a license in a lot of cases!
Trouble is, they continue to not give a f**k and us as the average motorist is caught out due to slip ups or forgetfulness, although general law abiding.
To be fair i dont know why they dont make it completely simple, if your car is not tax\'d or sorn, you get an instant penalty after say a month from the tax running out! The database is there, so why should it be randomly selected at who gets fined!
Am i right in saying in Oz, you get insurance from the Government?
Although i hate to say this but the whole Tax thing is a joke anyway, why not just put half a pence on a litre of fuel and scrap the road fund licence, then anyone who drives pays it!
I would see it as quite a fair scheme,
The people who use the roads more, pay more
The people who use un environmentally thirsty cars pay more
and not one single person could get away without paying!
The reason behind not doing this, the DVLA staff would probably be cut in half!
Think of the savings
Less paper/admin cost
Less staffing cost
Less policing cost
Quote from: jetpilot;735662Although i hate to say this but the whole Tax thing is a joke anyway, why not just put half a pence on a litre of fuel and scrap the road fund licence, then anyone who drives pays it!
I would see it as quite a fair scheme,
The people who use the roads more, pay more
The people who use un environmentally thirsty cars pay more
and not one single person could get away without paying!
The reason behind not doing this, the DVLA staff would probably be cut in half!
Think of the savings
Less paper/admin cost
Less staffing cost
Less policing cost
spot on!!!!
Ok here is my 2 pence, im currently in afghanistan and on new years eve my insurance finished, i havent re insured it because of the ridiculous insurance quotes i am getting because of this i am storing my car in my garage until i can get a decent insurance quote that isnt ripping my balls off,
being out here i cant do anything to sorn my car because i cannot send my tax disc off and i wanted to keep the tax so when i get insurance i can just get out and drive the car but this is not available now due to needing to return my tax disc,
This is an ill thought out plan that the DVLA has made and doesnt take all things into consideration, this will only raise the amount of illegal cars and drivers on the road which in turn will raise insurance prices, its a slippery slope
Kris
Quote from: AMH;735627Thanks Ian,
That\'s the issue - my friend has insured a car but is waiting for the paperwork to come through, she\'s worried she\'ll get stopped for having no tax but if she can do it online I\'ll tell her.
you can get the insurance company to email you cert, go post office and get a tax disk- jobs a gudden
Quote from: RobMatthews;735693you can get the insurance company to email you cert, go post office and get a tax disk- jobs a gudden
Unless you\'re picking the car up out of working hours when the post office is shut.....
even then you will still need to go to the seller, get the documentation, then go to the post office and tax it and then go back to fetch the car.
More hassle that we never had before if the car remained taxed under the old system.
Or you ain\'t got a printer like me. I\'d have to go to work to print it then to the post office then to collect the car. It\'s just hassle you don\'t need when buying a used car.
Lots of cars have been bought under the current system, where the seller has claimed the tax back, and the car has been bought with no tax on it. The new system doesn\'t change that at all - we\'ll do exactly the same as we always have done...we\'ll either drive it home untaxed and hope for the best, or we\'ll arrange it all before we collect the car.
Agreed, it does mean that there may be more cars for sale with no tax, where before a seller might have left it on, especially if there was less than a month on it...but there will also be sellers like me, who keep the car insured until it is sold, in which case the tax can remain, or be bought again by the seller online.
In fact, thinking about it...more sellers might do this, as it will make the car a lot easier to sell - if it provides less hassle for the buyer :)
and make sellers less inclined to be chipped on the price if they are having to pay for insurance on a car to keep it taxed just to entice in buyers...
Whichever way you look at it, it\'s going to cost someone more more somewhere down the line and be an added inconvenience to sellers and buyers....
and the serial uninsured driver will just carry on as before.... unconcerned by it all.
Quote from: jetpilot;735662Although i hate to say this but the whole Tax thing is a joke anyway, why not just put half a pence on a litre of fuel and scrap the road fund licence, then anyone who drives pays it!
I would see it as quite a fair scheme,
The people who use the roads more, pay more
The people who use un environmentally thirsty cars pay more
and not one single person could get away without paying!
The reason behind not doing this, the DVLA staff would probably be cut in half!
Think of the savings
Less paper/admin cost
Less staffing cost
Less policing cost
Think of the future income loss..
Car tax is going nowhere, with cars like electric cars taking off..
Got to get the revenue from somewhere, and so why not keep road tax and raise it to cover loss of fuel duty when petrol use starts to lessen..