Continuous insurance enforcement comes into effect in January 2011

[Ian65]

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.

[RobMatthews]

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?

[Mir]

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...

[skybusr34]

its just another way of catching the motorist out of his hard earned money yet again

[Dan Norton]

it 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.

[gsb876]

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

[Marcrs]

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.

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.

[Ian65]

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!

[Marcrs]

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.

This will still be the case
 
 

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.)

This has always been the case when buying an untaxed vehicle
 
 
 

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!

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

[Ian65]

This 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.
 
 

 

This 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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[Arnie_O]

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

[Marcrs]

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.

 
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

[TiddlesRX7]

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.

[peterwolds]

never heard of this mines taxed stuck in the garage uninsured (no intention of driving)

[Ian65]

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.

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?

never 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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