We shouldn’t have to insure our unused cars

If you drive someone else’s car using your own insurance to cover it third party, the car that you are going to drive must also have insurance and road tax, this has been the case for many years, so if your car is not insured or taxed no-one can drive it no matter what insurance they have (unless a trader perhaps), this has not changed. I worked many years selling car insurance and had to explain this many times to customers. It cant be difficult to make sure the car that is being used is the most useful one at the time and is the one insured in the persons name who is driving it whilst the other one is sorned, and the insurance company will always insure the one left on the drive or garage for fire and theft only which is a small sum compared to full insurance, most companies just amend cover and cost on the policy already held, this would cover the cost of adding the driver as a second driver until both cars are used again.

I may have become an innocent victim of the insurance laws. I have taken toaday off work as I am afraid to drive my new car into work as i work within the new Royston ring of steel” NPNR cameras. I have just had 6 weeks of frustration with purchasing a car through the Mercedes Approved used car scheme (that’s another story). I took up the 1st cover insurance that Mercedes offers for free under the scheme then purchased a years policy during that time. Since then I ended up rejecting the car but due to timings I collected the replacement car on Saturday but the 1st car could not be collected till yesterday(Tuesday). Last week I contacted the insurer and explained the situation that I needed to have the insurance overlapping for a few days. The insurance cover was sent directly to the main dealer and I duly collected the car and drove it home 100 miles and have been driving it since. This morning I checked on Ask mid and discovered to my horror the car was not showing as insured, despite me having a 7 day cover note. I contacted the insurance company this morning and was told the cover note issue to the dealer was only for taxation purposes. This was not pointed out to me and I have never had problems with insuring a 2nd car for a few days when changing vehicles. I also had to Sorn the first car over the weekend so as not to loose August tax refund. The insurance has now been amended for the new car but is only dated from this morning. I am now waiting for the car to show on ask mid as insured and I am now worried over whether I will be receiving a letter in the post for driving without insurance. Please let this be a warning to everyone to check ask mid even if you think you are insured. Of course it is the innocent like me that are going to be clobbered with the new laws, not those the don’t care about driving without tax and insurance.

Could the answer be to ask the Government to allow SORNing and getting tax refunded by the day, rather then by the month as it is now? That way, you could SORN a car online for, say, the three days it would take you to repair it and get three days’ worth of tax refunded. I don’t know why it’s not done already, with modern technology making this potentially simple.

some of us dont have a sporty model for week ends. we have our every day cars. They eventually get old and tatty so on a limited budget we buy a replacement. But that old car is still too good to scrap so we want to sell it on and leave the tax on it for the new owner to try and get back some of that money we threw at it for all those years. so we swap our insurance over for the new car add the old one on as a second car so that people can come and have a test drive but you only get a max of 30 days. Then oh dear the new car brought privately to save the over priced forecourt prices develops a problem and ends up off the road didn’t see that coming never mind i’ll use the old car till the new ones fixed. Thats ok get the new car back but now only have a couple of days to sell the old car before the insurance runs out. so do I send the tax back declare sorn? but I dont have a drive. if I keep tax on it It’ll get taken away and crushed. So do I give it away ? the car isn’t so attractive with no tax and is illegal parked on the road. mmmm not on to winner there am I.
Or the other way round the new car is going to cost loads to repair and can’t afford it just yet after just spending all my hard earned cash on it. Decide on a second hand part engine or gearbox but guess what the cars too new and there aren’t many spares about today. shall I send the tax back lose a month on the tax and sorn it till the part comes up or i have the money for the new part.?
Then 2 days after you send the tax back the part becomes available that would be about right.
You see I think this goverment doesn’t live in the real world where everyday people are mostly law abiding and struggle on low wages with two vehicles in the family out of the fact that the kids have to be driven miles to school because the local one was closed. the wifes working because the husband has to drive miles to work for less than he should be earning then has to work all hours to make ends meet. These are the real people that get hurt buy legislation like this. The well off can afford the Etype, Bently, or Lambo all legal in the garage for its monthly outing while using his and hers Porsches daily. the other scum buy non Mot’d wrecks for £50 don’t tax or insure them and can’t because they don’t have a licence anyway. So the most of us don’t exist in the eyes of the government. So if your car is over five years old you must be scum.
The other solution someone posted earlier about putting the levy on fuel.
To that I ask are you nuts? All this will do is allow young rich kids to drive cars that are too powerful for them resulting in more fatalities. as well as just being unfair. The experienced driver gets a discount at present for paying in but not taking out.That advantage for the good safe driver would be gone. I for one would be far more wreckless if having an accident wouldn’t put up my premium. I could drink drive get banned get my licence back and just drive like nothing happened. The scum still wouldn’t mot or tax their cars and the insurace even though on the fuel would not pay out as it was invalidated by the lack of the former. Its our worst nightmare to be hit by an uninsured driver.
but hammering the everyday guy who’s not intending to drive the uninsured car and was just keeping it till it’s fixed or until someone comes round with reasonable money for the old pride and joy is just wrong. Anyway tomorrow I shall be leaving the Jag on the drive next to the Bently and taking the rusty uninsured ford with no mot or tax to work instead

Ok so your not a tory and I agree with the burglary argument. But you also don’t arrest everybody thats walking down the road with a DVD player under their arm. My reply wasn’t crass, I posted that prior to your reply. As you’ve worked in a deprived area you will understand how some people think. I have worked with people that have had to chose between car tax/ insurance or rent. It’s not right but some of these people are single parents desparatly trying to keep a roof over their childrens heads. ( rather than sponging of the state) if they can’t get to work they lose their job. We could take a snipe at those people and suggest that its the poor life choices made that puts them in that situation in the first place? But that would be a nonsense.
The problem is that the government seem to have a very stereotypical veiw of certain groups of people. ” lets kick the rioters out of their council houses and stop their benefits” what makes that statement worse is that it is offensive to those rioters that were not council tennants.
See done it again.
As I said its like being at school where one idiot breaking the rules affects all the others that don’t. Just wondered if you have ever seen minority report with Tom Cruise? in that film people were arrested and imprisoned for crimes that they were going to commit in the future.
As a legal minimum insurance covers the third party. So if the car is not being driven what risk is there to the third party. If you sorn the car has to be off the road. Some people can’t park off road so they have to keep the car taxed for it to be on the road used or not.
Generally the people that break the law don’t have insurace, tax or mot because they don’t care!
if they are caught let them have it to the fullest extent of the law. Hammering the person who can’t sell that old car and wants to hang on for a reasonable price rather than taking peanuts from some tyre kicker is wrong. Maybe with all the I.T involved now it would be easier to simply sieze any vehicle that was say more than 100yrds away from the adress it is registered to if it is not insured, any further away than that and its being driven illegaly, catch the people in the act, cars parked 5 miles away from home address? its being used sieze it. Dont make the honest guy pay.

As for the 70mph that means 78mph 10%speedo error +3mph local adjustment. I’ve been in cars where neither the car or the driver should be allowed over 40mph. I’ve also driven on the autobaan at over double our speed limit in a car that feels more like 80mph, my car is capable of double the speed limit but i stick to 70 yeah right. cars are safer now than they have ever been the driving test is harder to pass than when we got our licences. so does that mean that driving standards are higher now? This is the problem some people have no idea of speed. And whilst it works in germany it would not work here. you get idiots that do 70 on the motorway and sit in lane three and won’t move over because they’ve decided to enforce the speed limit on everybody else themselves. these are the same idiots that pull out to overtake at 60- 65 when your coming down at 78ish.We have the lowest motorway speed limit in the eu most people already drive at 80 or more so make it legal then use the extra resourses to catch real criminals and the perpetraters of real crimes like not insuring their unused vehicles.

Well heres one for you all. I think the new law is barmy!
I don’t have a lot of disposable income so my ageing car needs some work doing. nothing that makes it unroadworthy more annoying bumps and squeeks.
so after working out what it would cost it was more than the thing is worth, but it still has 8 months mot so for someone it may be a do’er upper.
So I brought another car it needed minor repairs like a service and a couple of tyres so I insured the new car and kept the old one on my insurance at extra cost so that I could drive to work while the garage sorted out the new car about a week I thought.
Anyway there was a problem/ Accident at the garage and the result is that they caused a large amount of damage to the new car which they are now having to sort out at their cost, in the mean time i’m driving my old car still. Heres the thing my insurance company sent me new documents but they are wrong there is no mention of the new car and I didn’t get a notice for the temp cover for the old one.
All I got was a certificate for the old car with new from and expired dates on it. When I rang them they told me i’m insured for the new car as my main car and I have temp cover on the old one. Still can’t get the correct paperwork. I was driving the new car before taking it to the garage but may well have been uninsured due to their c**k-up
The repairs to the new car could be a few weeks and the temp cover on my old car will expire. So what now if Iswap my policy again and reinsure my old car which I will also have to retax next month. I will not be insured for the new car which is taxed, does that mean it should be siezed and crushed?. Likewise if I get the car back and the temp cover has or almost expired I will have an uninsured car with tax on.
I could sorn it but I want to sell it so unless I find a buyer with sensible money to offer i’ll have to let the first person that turns up pay me whatever they offer. Under the old laws i’d have still had a month or so to sell the car without worrying about where it is parked. I could haggle over the price.
Now I feel that any buyer will just offer me very little knowing I must sell or Break the law. If I sorn the car i’ll never fix it up as I already thought it cheaper to buy another car so why would I do that?
I also do not have the luxuary of my own drive. If some of the post on here that i’ve read were law I would by now have had both cars crushed and most likely be in prison although i’ve paid out a large amount of money to a reputable insurer If stopped I don’t Have any up to date paperwork for either car, now thats worrying.

Well Lamster
Thats the point I was trying to make.
Sorry to here about your dilema sounds like a nightmere.
If your insurance say your covered you proberly are, keep on to them about the documents and try not to get stopped in the mean time.
The car in for repair maybe covered on the garage’s policy they should really do more`to help you out like lending you a car.

Hi, There must be some human rights issue here, I agree that to be uninsured is not acceptible. But if you own your car it is your property and you should be able to keep it off road without having to tell the DVLA, what has it got to do with them. I think most people can see through this law and can see that its largly just another way of getting revenue. I think this is all wrong and would urge motorist to fight back in what ever way they can to overturn this law. Haven’t we had enough big brother.

Borris is quite right, why should we have to tell the DVLA anything other than what they need to know, have you got a car on the road, if so then the DVLA needs to know, so if I had a Museum and had 25 cars the DVLA would want to let the insurance company’s, and know doubt them, fleece us another time.

Yes Borris
we are not telling them anything they don’t already know your MOT Tax and Insurance is already on big brothers laptop I mean database. for The police DVLA VOSA and many many more to look at.
The problem arises when you don’t intend to drive the car for what ever reason but still wish to keep it.If you sorn the car your saying museum piece as your tax is invalidated when you declare sorn yes even if theres 6,8,10 months left on it. If the Mot expires you would have to trailer it to the test center as you can not legally drive it there as no insurance company will cover a non mot’d vehicle,
I know the excuse for the tax is I’m taking it to an MOT which is legal if it is previously booked in.
I’ve just sorned my old car so I can keep it for a while after having problems with the new one just in case. I phoned DVLA to get the low down on this law. And its goes like this. when your insurance runs out you will get 14 days to reinsure or sorn your car/bike before they are alerted at which time you will recieve a gentle threat, I mean reminder if after a further 14days you do nothing You will be gently carted off fined £1000 and your vehicle siezed. My old car will most likely never go back on the road even though it still has 8 months mot as I can’t give a legal test drive and can’t allow anybody to try the car out because if its seen on the road before I sell it guess who gets the £1000 fine. The only person that can drive the car as is is a trader with trade plates as He/she doesn’t need to display tax with trade plates and has insurance to cover all cars even ones that are not mot’d. This is because they are upstanding trustworthy members of society and would not abuse this by driving around in an unroadworthy car let alone sell one like it.
Sorry to rant but has anybody seen the new MOT certificates yet. They look like someone spent 10mins on Word to do the template and I can imagine the old bill saying something like “Hey sonny did you print this yourself”? Now go to the “Dog and Duck” for a bent one ” No Need” !

The problem for most working people is mainly the greedy insurance companies who have made no allowance for insuring off road or on road sorned vehicles.. I have had several situations over the years in which I was forced to keep 2 cars on the road…. mainly due to one of them needing repairs… Why dont insurance comapnies have a special low level insurance premium for cars that cant be driven over a particular time period, which would enable them to still be taxed. Im sure a 25% level of normal insurance for a second car which was not being driven would be more helpful to honest owners in a fix in some of those situations which always seem to occur with cars. The idiots of course would not pay any insurance or tax anyway…. no matter what the law or the circumstances….

Just to point out Alex, that a sorned vehicle does not need insurance. But also cannot have valid tax and therefore cannot be legally on the road.
Now what I don’t understand and this isn’t new but I’m a safe driver no claims and been driving umteen years. So I get 75% NCD but if I insure a second car all my years of NCD don’t count and I have to pay the full premium. I can only drive one at a time and behind the wheel I am the same risk so I should get my NCD but I don’t. The premium varies but that distinquises between the Ford Mondeo used daily and the AC cobra used when its Sunny, so not much then. Now consider that insurance has to be third party minimum, if the car is not being driven then what is the risk to the third party? Unless they can claim for crashing into a parked but uninsured vehicle. What should have happened is that Tax and Insurance should have been more easily purchased Tax and Insurance could be brought monthly for vehicles that have been delared sorn and not been continously taxed for 12months or more since declaring sorn. That way you can sorn a vehicle you are not using if its off road. Or keep it legal while your trying to sell it.But NO! that won’t raise enough revenue.

I have just been pulled over by police; my car was not on the database; eventually they got through to my insurers “Tesco”, who confirmed that I was insured. 30 minutes later I contacted Tesco, who confirmed that I was insured, and that the details they had were correct (I changed car, but not insurers in September); they had not put me on the Motor Insurance Database. So not only was my time wasted; Police time was wasted; and I felt physically sick with the mental trauma of the incident. I do my best to follow the law, so to be treated as a criminal was awful. It was not helped by a rather patronising, but helpful, Policeman, who asked me whether I was aware of the penalties for not being insured.

This law doesn’t help those of us trying to sell our old vehicles. I’m in the middle of two cars and am frantically trying to find the best way of keeping legal without forking out a huge amount on a car I no longer want. Currently its going to cost me an extra £220 for one weeks worth of insurance for a car I’m trying to sell. Its only £500 to insure it for a whole year.

Talk about a government yet again not thinking things through properly.

why can the police not do anything if a car is not tax mot or insuread when it is used on the road unless they see it on the road . i was told the police dont do anything them self you have to report it to DVLA . i dont break the law how come others can drive with no mot tax or insurance .

I’ve found a solution to my specific problems; I’ve now got trade insurance that covers all of my cars, whether on road, off road, SORNd, or even if they’re just in my care. It costs me about £100 more than my usual insurance but means I’m never uninsured under any circumstances.

Of course, that doesn’t mean I necessarily keep tax/SORN in order for the off-road cars, but at least the insurance is covered.

To be clear, if a car of mine goes on-road, it’s taxed 😉

It is not true, as stated in the article above, that “The only get-out is if you formally register your motor as being off the road, by submitting a Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN)”. You also do not have to insure your car if your vehicle has been kept off-road since before SORN came into force on 31 January 1998 (like my 1977 Spitfire that is no longer roadworthy but which I can’t bear to get rid of!), but articles like this, and other sources of information — even warnings enclosed with tax reminders, for instance — do not tell the whole story and are misleading people.

Can an Vehicle be Sold Sold As SEEN if the vehicle has an SORN on it

I do not know what all the fuss is about, the easy answer is use the SORN, I have a 1963 MGB and have used the SORN for some time now, so get into SORN.

Hi Larry
Sorn is not the problem Not if you intend keeping the car or simply watching the grass grow round it over over the next twenty years. The problem arises if you are trying to sell a car that has been sorned Say you have a rare car that is road worthy but the mot has expired because its been layed up for 12months for repairs/restoration you know it would pass an MOT if you could get it to the test center but other than trailering it there and back there is no legal way to do so unless your a trader. At least under the old system you could cover the no tax element by pre booking the test some insurance companies say it is ok to drive to a test some say definatly not without a current mot. I suspect if you had an accident the ones that say yes would wash their hands and leave you on your own As it happens my old car is sorned still has mot on it. And wasn’t sold because I couldn’t offer a test drive to any prospective buyers as it wasn’t insured, and I wasn’t prepared to sell for an amount less than it was worth so I kept it. Sitting there eventually it will develope a problem and won’t start and some one will end up giving me £100 for scrap its not worth a great deal maybe £1000 but no one will pay that unless they drive it and convince themselves that its worth that money. I know most cars we buy privatly we are most likely not covered to test drive the and we take a risk but in the old days your car didn’t get siezed and taken for disposal.

Hi nevertellanyone.
Your right insurance on petrol is not the way to go. But maybe Tax is that would level the playing field. If you drive a gas guzzler then you pay more just like you do now with the £475 per year for said cars.
Maybe something more radical like new number plates but instead of a dealers name it has you insurance policy number and the expiry date on it or a bar code that the police can read. and when you go to collect the plate you have to show a valid mot for the vehicle.

Now today the Tories have announced plans to levy tax on what roads we use so if you have a little 850cc band B car and you run it up and down the motorway you’ll pay the £475 rate if you already pay that rate then you can drive anywhere so no increase if you Drive a Bently Merc or a Jag.
So what this means is if you want to pay the ammont you pay now you’ll have to stick to minor roads to get to work or go on holiday so your 3hr getaway drive becomes 17hrs when your stuck on a “B” road with all the other people that want to pay lower tax? Out of touch? time for a chage me thinks

Hello everyone.

Got a question for you all… I’m leaving the country next month and want to sell my car whoe’s MOT and TAX is due in June 2013. I have already cancelled my insurance so what options do I have to sell the car? Should I get it taxed? I am new and don’t know much about the law but what I red above is scary.
I will really appreciate if someone can guide me step by step about what should I do to sell the car before I leave the country.