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40 year MOT exemption on hold

The lead article in this week's issue of the popular newspaper, Classic Car Weekly, is on what their headline calls an "MOT hold up".

Posted: 170531

One of the biggest and controversial changes to affect classic car owners in the UK is still on hold because of the General Election in progress at present. Reports say the Department for Transport (DfT) had been preparing to make an announcement but it was forstalled by the calling of the General Election as Government departments may not make announcements of that type during the progress of an election. So we will have to wait until a new Government is formed and the DfT minister has had time to get up to speed on the MOT exemption brief.

Reports say the new legislation to comply with an EU Directive must be implemented by December 2018 which is before any Brexit date, which means the UK remains bound by EU regulations until then. The expectation is the MOT exemption measure will go through but when that will happen is still not known.

The new rules from that EU Directive allow member countries to exemt vehicles of "historical interest" from testing if they are at least 30 years old, no longer in production and have received no substantial change. Under proposals thought to be announced by the DfT, vehicles in the UK more than 40 years old would not need an MOT. This would lead to a further 331,000 cars

registered between 1960 and 1977 being exmpt from mandatory annual MOT testing.

Many members of the classic car world feel the UK MOT exemption is not a wise move as the discipline of preparing and presenting a classic car for an annual MOT test is desirable and the car is examined by MOT testers with a great deal of experience in checking essential features on a car many of which are clearly safety related. An enthusiast maintaining their classic car can, however able and careful, miss an essential safety item which an MOT tester could pick up.