Proposed motor insurance change would affect historic cars
The Department of Transport has just released a consultation on tighter measures aimed at reducing levels of uninsured motoring. The intended effect is to encourage responsible behaviour by motorists through targeting evaders by record-based compliance activities leaving a smaller hard core of persistent offenders for the police to deal with on the road. The main feature of the scheme is to warn motorists detected as a keeper of a vehicle registered on the DVLA vehicle database but not covered by valid motor insurance. Having warned the keeper in such a case, increasingly stringent enforcement measures would be taken against those that do not heed the warning.

The concern for an MG enthusiast and others with an historic car seems to be that owners who cancel their insurance or do not renew cover because they do not intend using it - for example whilst their car is off the road in a garage during the Winter months - will have to make sure they SORN their car even though the tax disc may not have expired! In practical terms though, most classic car insurance policies (providing road cover and fire and theft cover) are kept in force when cars are parked up, so perhaps it is not too much of a burden.

To use a vehicle on the road or public place, its use must be covered by a valid policy of third party motor insurance as set out Section 143 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. The DfT consultation is about the regulations required for commencement and operation of the scheme of continuous enforcement of motor insurance authorised by Section 22 of, and Schedule 5 to the Road Safety Act 2006. Its provisions introduce a new offence of being a registered keeper of a vehicle which does not meet statutory insurance requirements.
Requirement to insure vehicles which are not covered by a current SORN
The Road Safety Act 2006 contained measures that required every vehicle that was not covered by a SORN to be insured for use on the road - Insurance from the Record. At the time of writing in July 2008 this provision had not yet been implemented, not was there any indication of when it might be. There was much publicity given to this provision at the time, so quite a number of people are under the mistaken impression that it is currently in force. More
(Note posted on 31.7.08)

In effect these proposals on implementing Insurance from the Record is a subject that has been raised previously on the V8 website, since the legislation was enacted in 2006 but never put into effect. More

The DfT consultation details may be found under a new title at: www.dft.gov.uk/consultations/open/motor/

Check your ASKMID record
The DfT consultation document indicates there is an expectation that 5% of those records flagged up will actually be insured, but not correctly entered on the database. So do ensure you check whether your vehicle is on the MID by contacting ASKMID.
See www.askmid.com and also News13

If there are any concerns or issues you feel should be raised as part of the DfT consultation process, please post them on the V8 Bulletin Board or send them by email to the V8 Registrar.

News information provided by Chris Hunt Cook & George Wilder (22.1.09)
For more road tax, SORN and motor insurance items see our running index. More
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