Please note that with effect from today, 23rd May 2011, it is now law that it is the responsibility of the registered keeper of a car to make sure that they either have insurance on it or sorn the car with the DVLA.

Further info on this can be found under our traders section

Thanks
Sarah
Neil Willies Insurance Brokers Limited

Thanks for the heads-up. This had totally passed me by.

I have just bought a coupe and I'm selling my old mondeo.

The car is taxed but not insured and parked in a residential car park.

So, with this new law, how am I supposed to sell the car? Either I have to insure it (which is ridiculous as it's off the road and will be expensive as I can't use my no claims discount on two cars) or I have to get it SORNd, and reclaim the tax. The SORN is for a minimum of 21 days, so the new owner wont be able to tax the car!

WTF?!

Surely they could have seen this problem before they implemented the new law! Uninsured drivers wont have the car registered to them anyway, so these automatic fines will never reach them.

This law just hits legal drivers!

As I understand it you get an initial warning letter and then only get fined if you fail to SORN or insure the car within a given time period.

So if you're selling the car I'd just leave it taxed, but not insured.

That's going to make test drives interesting, given the paucity of 'any car' policy extensions these days.

Are they as rare as all of that? Both my policy (Kwikfit) and my wife's (Direct Line) include DOC.

"Drive any car" entitlements on insurance docs are irrelevant to this new Continuous Insurance Enforcement regulation made under the road traffic act 1988 - the registered keeper must be the one who has sufficient cover (and therefore appearing on the MID).

I dont think its been very well thought out either.

I do understand the 'uninsured driver' brigade fighting for this change in the law but perhaps they have made too much use on the statistics to push this through to the statute books under Regulation 144 of the above Act.

Anyone can say there are 2 million untaxed cars in the uk - and therefore there are 2 million uninsured cars driving around but that doesnt really bear true when a (high?) proportion of that 2 million are off the road for legitimate reasons and should not have been included in the statistical research for this fight.

Ive got 7 cars and four bikes stored away and just two that I keep insured and taxed. Does this mean that I have 11 of the 2 million uninsured vehicles on the road ??

And it really will be a ball ache for people selling/buying cars privately (I believe industry are going to be 'protected' in some way ?).
Makes you wonder what the end result is going to be.

The plan this year is to write to all 'offenders' pointing out there errors and asking them to SORN or tax/insure or scrap the vehicle, and also point out that they are committing an offence and will be liable to a fine (non negotiable even if you sold it months ago as they are also going to say that you should have notified them of change of keeper when that happened..... another offence committed !).

Sometime after June I think the warning letter will cease, and the correspondance will became a straight fine (currently £100 but discounted to £50 if paid within two? weeks?).
I want shares in the DVLC !!!!!

The relevance of drive other cars is:

1. There's been an on-going debate for ages about whether it's a requirement of the DOC entitlement that the car is also insured in the owner's name. This law closes down that debate (well, mostly, if a friend of mine had a car which was SORNed then I could still use my DOC entitlement to drive it to or from a pre-booked MOT or to/from a pre-booked appointment to have repairs made as per an MOT failure).

2. My involvement with the DOC debate on this forum started because we used to have a forum member who had registered his coupe in his girlfriend's name and insured himself on a Fiat 126. He then used his DOC entitlement to drive the coop and insisted that this was legit. The new law (ill-thought out though I agree it is) does at least close that loop-hole.

I presume the coupe wasnt insured in this scenario?

Ross

Interesting point which would be extremely useful.

Have you got the link to anything that describes it in legal speak so that I can print it off for a future MoT just in case the car gets stopped by a green know-it-all 'must get my stats up' police officerer ?.
(No offence to the police officers that actually do know it all )

Well, the person in question said it was, in as much as he was legally able to drive it.

But, no, it was not insured directly in anybody's name.

If Stan wanders by he may be able to help, but I've had no luck in tracking down the actual bit of legislation.

Plenty of sites give it in plain English, including the Direct.gov website, but I've failed to track down the actual letter of the law.

The two relevant laws are the Road Traffic Act (which specifies the testing of vehicles) and the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act (which lays out vehicle taxation), so the actual legal wording must be in there somewhere, but I'm blowed if I can find it.

Which is a shame, because it would be interesting to read the exact wording.

Only just read this thread.
This prospective section of the Road Traffic Act 1998 would seem to my (non-expert) eyes to require a *vehicle* to be insured, not the person driving it. It makes the keeper guilty of an offence if it is not. I guess that would mean that for DOC to be operative the vehicle in question has to be insured seperately, but its not the driver who commits the offence. However it is 'prospective'. Whatever that means.

Interestingly that Act also exempts you from insurance if you deposit just £500k with the Accountant General of the Senior Courts. I guess if you have a spare £500k lying around they will assume you are good for the cost of an accident.

Yes, I read the 500K bit............ it was about 30K until about 4 years ago !.

And probably 500K per car rather than per person I expect.
But then again - 500K personally invested at even 2% return will give a £10K insurance pot each year.

Another point to remember is that it will be the registered keeper thats going to get stuffed rather than the owner of the car, if differant.
Perhaps we should all reregister cars in the names of minors !.

While I applaude the motive behind this new law, it's particularly badly thought out, because at its heart is an association between the registered keeper and the owner, which the DVLA have been trying to avoid being considered the same thing for years (and with good reason).

In short the law is saying that the registered keeper is guilty of an offence if a vehicle for which they are the keeper is not either:

a. Identified by registration number on an insurance policy or

b. Owned by a person who has a policy in force allowing them to drive a number of vehicles which are not identified by registration number.

So, if a car is privately owned it must be directly insured by somebody, irrespective of whether or not that person is the registered keeper. If it's owned by, say, a motor trader who has a 'drive any car' policy then it's still fine, but there will be a disconnect if the owner is not the registered keeper.

Secion 144B gives the statutory defences, which are:

1. There is a security in relation to the vehicle in force. This is the £500,000 deposit and, as is clear from section 144(1) of the RTA applies to a *person*, not a vehicle, i.e. it's a very expensive drive any vehicle policy.

2. The vehicle is owned by an organisation that is exempt from the requirements to carry insurance or is being used by them for an approved purpose.

3. The registered keeper is no longer the keeper and has done everything they should have done to notify the DVLA of this.

4. The vehicle is SORNed

5. The vehicle has been stolen but not recovered and the DVLA have been informed

So, yes, you can still drive a car on DOC cover, but only if you can convince somebody else to insure it (during which process they'll have to confirm that they are the owner of the vehicle, which may be a fraudulent claim on their part) or if you can get a motor trader to claim that they own it (which may also be fraudulent).