DVLA fine for no insurance on vehicle, although vehicle was SORN?

Smk00

Hi I am new here but urgently looking for some advice from anyone who can help us.

My partner has a vehicle which is on our drive, we didn't realise you had to have insurance on a vehicle for it to sit on the drive, the vehicle is not used as is going to be sold.

Received a letter from DVLA stating he had to either insure or declare SORN, so he declared SORN online 7 days before the date stated on there letter.

He never received confirmation to his email although had entered email address in as requested after declaring SORN online.

Fast forward a few weeks & he receives a fine from the dvla for failure to insure! £50 if paid before a certain date or £100 if not.

The date stated on the letter for failure to insure was 15/2 he declared SORN online on the 8/2 so he called the DVLA to check they had received SORN online and the date it was received and why no confirmation of this had been received.
All details were correct they stated SORN was done online on 8/2 and the vehicle has been sorned since then.
Confirmation email had not been received because 1 letter in the email input was put wrong!
Asked if they could resend an email to correct address they said "no" they then said a letter confirmation was in the post & will be with us very soon, this never arrived.

So my partner was going to pay the fine just to get rid of them but when calling the line explained the situation and the lady said once paid you have accepted you were liable for this offence, of course this is untrue, he declared SORN on 8/2 the failure to insure was dated 15/2 so the vehicle was SORN on this date!

So he never paid the fine, wrote a letter disputing it, posted recorded delivery, letter signed for and received by them 2 days after posting, no reply as yet.

Today 2 weeks after said letter received by them he has now received a "final notice" failure to insure, demanding £100 to avoid prosecution?

Does anyone know what we should do now? We are right in thinking he has not broken any law?

Is there anything we can now write back? Do we just put up and shut up and pay?

Any advice would be great help right now.

Thank you

Richard53

I almost fell foul of this one. I run two bikes, and decided to take the older one off the road for a while to rebuild it. I let the insurance lapse as I had no intention of using it on the road and it wasn't really worth insuring against theft. There was only a couple of months left on the tax, so I was going to leave it as it was and SORN it when the tax ran out. Fortunately, someone told me about the Continuous Insurance Enforcement regs that came into force in 2011. If the vehicle is not SORN, it must be insured, whether it is in use or on bricks on your driveway. I like to think I keep up to date with stuff like this, but it passed me by. Anyway, I SORNed the bike pronto.

I suspect that, regardless of the dates of the letters, an offence has already been committed if the car was sitting uninsured for any length of time before it was SORNed. Hope you get it sorted.

Smk00

Thank you Richard53
There was a period of about 2 weeks with no insurance so I suppose it looks like we are going to have to pay this.
It doesn't state on this final notice when he has till to pay this.

Richard53

I guess this is one of those times you are going to have to bite the bullet and pay. You might contact them, explain the circumstances, and see if they are still prepared to accept the £50 but I wouldn't hold my breath. I don't blame you at all for not spotting this one though. I read motoring columns in the papers, and I am a regular on a lot of bike forums, i try to keep up to date with all kinds of motoring issues, and this one totally passed me by. I felt pretty foolish, but at least I was able to correct it before anyone noticed.

If I were cynical, I would say that they deliberately didn't make a big issue of it at the outset in order to generate a bit of income while people were still ignorant of it. The fact that the main drivers of the policy were the insurance companies themselves (well, knock me down with a feather) added to that suspicion. But then someone told me that I must at some point have received a letter explaining this from the DVLA, probably in a tax reminder. I must have thrown it away unread.

Bad luck, anyway. Hope you get it sorted.

Paradigm

Smk00 wrote: »

Thank you Richard53
There was a period of about 2 weeks with no insurance so I suppose it looks like we are going to have to pay this.
It doesn't state on this final notice when he has till to pay this.

Phone again asking where the confirmation letter is, that's what they ask you to do! Don't mention the "fine".

Rover_Driver

As above, you need the comfirmation letter that it was SORN on 8th to send a copy of it to them showing that the SORN was valid on 15th.

Lum

Might be a good idea to pull up your browser history and get a printout showing you going through the direct.gov website and declaring SORN.

Then switch your browser to offline mode and see if you can pull up the confirmation page, though this is unlikely to happen.


If you'd declared SORN by post, I would be telling you to quote Section 7 of the interpretation act at them, but not sure if this applies to an online form.

Smk00

Thank you for all the replies, we tried the going back on the browser it didn't work.

Although on there first fine letter it stated this "our records show you are the registered keeper of this vehicle, the motor insurance database showed it was not insured on the 15/2/13 this is an offence and to avoid prosecution you must"

But no it wasn't insured on the 15/2/13 but it was declared SORN by this date, it was declared SORN on 8/2/13, this is what is confusing us.

Smk00

He phoned again asking for the confirmation and was told it was in the post again, will call again on Monday, also have recordings of all calls made & screen shots.