The road tax on my p38 is costing me £22 per month and I haven't used it now for a couple of months. I have other cars to use and the p38 is mainly kept just for towing.
I also need to do a few jobs on it once the weather gets better so it may be off road for a bit.
Tax discs have gone and I was thinking about SORN'ing it (if there is such a word). Anyone else doing it? I see a few of you have more than one p38.
It is all done on line now. It doesn't cost anything and I wondered if there is any limit to the number of times you can switch. Whole months I guess. It is not clear from the gov website. Wondering whether to drop the insurance down to TFT as well.
I've SORN'd cars in the past - really just saves paying the tax. If you leave the vehicle uninsured, you MUST SORN it, or risk getting a hefty fine.
Having it SORN'd and insured is fine, obviously.
Can't see why there would be a reason to keep taxing and insuring - certainly not on a regular basis. It would be a faff, and you'll always lose out on a bit of cash as you can only tax for a minimum of a month. Though whether its still calendar months or a rolling month now I don't know... haven't paid attention to that bit in a while. Someone else will know better I'm sure.
Don't think there is a problem. I SORN my motorcycle every year over winter, tax it by direct debit when the weather gets decent enough to use it and then SORN it again until next time. I don't bother with the insurance I just let that run as it only costs me £90 a year fully comp (as I'm old....).
As long as its kept off the road its fine, and since they scrapped the paper discs, a Sorn now lasts until you change keeper, rather than for 12 months.
Its not just a case of having a fine if it isn't taxed and not Sorned - I've known the DVLA contractors NSL to stick a bright yellow wheel clamp on it and then turn up within a couple of days to remove it. Usually when they are parked on the road, but I've known it happen to a friends son with a car parked behind his house in a private car park. Provided its off road and shows a green tick against the vehicle tax section if you look here > https://www.gov.uk/get-vehicle-information-from-dvla you should be fine though.
i'd be more worried about what extra problems my P38 would present after being laid up for a few months... then the saving of a few months road tax might not seem so attractive
i know this doesn't apply to me but what is SORN
Statutory Off Road Notification
It's a declaration that a vehicle has been taken off the road and you no longer have to pay the annual Road Tax (actually Vehicle Excise Duty). This is important because if you let the VED lapse you're automatically liable for penalties. This way the DVLA just have to check on the computer that your VED has expired and send you a fine in the post. The SORN will stop that process, but if you're caught on the road with a SORNd vehicle, you're Donald Ducked.
If it isn't SORN then it must be insured too. There's 3 things we must have in the UK, a valid MoT certificate which is issued assuming you car passes the annual safety test, the VED (or road tax) and insurance at a minimum to cover damage to third parties. No insurance is the most serious and a car being used on the road with no insurance will be seized by the police and held until you, or someone else, produce valid insurance for it. If no insurance is produced within a set time, the car goes to the crusher. Driving with no insurance results in 6 penalty points on your licence (12 points within 3 years is a driving ban), a fine and vastly increased insurance premiums.
The automatic fine for not having VED or declaring SORN is £80 but if you're taken to court it could be £1000 or 5x the VED for your vehicle.
If you get caught driving without all three requirements it gets expensive really fast.
As Gilbertd says, insurance incurs the single biggest penalty, but lack of MOT can also invalidate insurance depending on the policy details.
It's all a nice fat pain in the butt. Suffice to say its well worth setting reminders in your phone for all these expiry dates - which are all separate.
If you are that forgetful its probably worth signing up for automatic notifications about MoT, Tax et al. At least you get a nice letter from DVLA about 3 weeks before your tax is due. Mine turned up around 7 th Feb and got paid online last weeks "finance evening". I do tend to overlook these things so have a pretty rigid methodology. Which doesn't mean piling stuff up on the windowsill!
All written down on the house and workshop calendars. Maybe its time for a few more baby steps into the 21 st century by putting reminders on the phone too!
Clive
wow if i ever go to europe i will have to brush up on some rules and regulations , you seem to have them for everything, and with the separation from the eu i doubt if its going to get any better. we just park them in the paddock and wait for the registry to send a letter for you to hand in the plates and even then just sign a stat deck stating they where lost and then screw them to the side of the shed . most people just ignore the letter
I went to register one off my buggies for RV rego (off road rego) after 3 year restore to have one lady at the rego office to say you was supposed to hand the plates in (with a stern look on her face) to have the next bloke just look at me and say do you want to keep your plates it will save you $40 dollars for the new plates.
That's one major difference, the plates belong to the car. It is registered when new, allocated a number and that remains with it for life. A buggy or anything else that is never used on the road doesn't need anything, no registration, no VED, no MoT, no insurance. If we were to do a long term restoration the car would need to be SORN while it is off the road. Once the registration is done, you take it for the MoT test, insure it, register online to pay the road tax (by direct debit from your bank account) and start using it. Registering it for road tax automatically cancels the SORN and declaring SORN automatically cancels any direct debit. It's all enforced using ANPR (Automatic Number Plate Recognition) with cameras placed at road junctions and the theory is that if you have no VED or the car is SORN but being used, you get a demand for money in the post although my daughter drove around for 4 months in a car that was SORN and never heard anything (her previous car was written off so she bought a replacement, swapped the insurance from the old one to the new one but forgot the VED so was paying for a car that was in a scrapyard and not for the one she was driving). A lot of police cars are also fitted with ANPR cameras so will flag it up if they pass a car that isn't legit.
we do have some things that are similar, ANPR are fitted to police cars only i think . when NSW introduced this the police commissioner went for a drive with the police to see how it went , after 2 hour they court 20 plus unregistered cars and hadn't left the initial area they started in. the commissioner stated on exiting the car that all vehicle where to be fitted out immediately which was followed by an immediate rise in rego's
our RV rego is basically an insurance to cover the medical costs in the event off an accident in the bush, helicopter extraction is expensive.
we generally have a least one death a year on the west coast of tassie from RV vehicles (bikes buggies 4x4 etc)
in tassie we have to have 3rd party insurance for road vehicles , this covers injuries only, like RV rego , part of rego when paid for in tassie. some states you have to take out another insurance, is this the insurance you mentioned or is it a comprehensive insurance to cover the other car for damage. i think all vehicles should have at least (bomb insurance )that's what we call it , just to cover the other car not yours, it's around $150, cheap.
Legal minimum is 3rd party insurance that covers damage to someone else's car (or house or whatever you drive into) and injuries to them. The available options are 3rd party only, 3rd party fire & theft (so it's also covered if it catches fire or is stolen) and fully comprehensive which covers everything including damage to your own car because you drove it into something, hire car while you can't use it, etc. It used to be a case that 3rd party only was far cheaper than fully comp but they found that the people that bought 3rd party only had a cheap car that they didn't care about and were more likely to crash it so these days there isn't actually that much difference in price between the different levels of cover. They are all bloody expensive, especially for young drivers (over £2,000 a year for a 17 year old in a car worth less than half that is normal).
IMO we should use the method they have in NZ (I Think?) where insurance is bought by the government and paid by a levy on fuel. I think it's quite a neat system in that it incentivises people to burn less fuel* and there's no faffing around with individual policies which are a very expensive mountain of red tape.
*Or at least, the people who burn most fuel covering more distance, faster pay the most for their insurance.
that's not a bad idea to levy fuel but the governments already tax the crap out of it .
as for insurance what gets me is bomb insurance get you 20.000.000 million dollars in damage for 150 odd dollars ,but if you insure your car for 10.000 grand on top its 3/4/5 times the price , that's a con
Morat wrote:
IMO we should use the method they have in NZ (I Think?) where insurance is bought by the government and paid by a levy on fuel. I think it's quite a neat system in that it incentivises people to burn less fuel* and there's no faffing around with individual policies which are a very expensive mountain of red tape.
*Or at least, the people who burn most fuel covering more distance, faster pay the most for their insurance.
The downside to that, is it doesn't penalise anyone who drives like a complete incompent twat who can't park without hitting stuff though. As theres no incentive for them to improve if they are already driving a wreck its hardly going to matter if it picks up a few more dents and scrapes.