Lapsed MOT and structural damage insurance claim

brp86

Hi all, apologies if I'm repeating content from other threads but wanted to get all my facts straight in one place.

I had an incident in my vehicle (no other parties involved) which resulted in bodywork and structural damage, sufficient enough that the opinion of 2 different body shops and a garage are that it would likely be a total loss due to being beyond economic repair.

My MOT has also very recently lapsed.

I understand from other threads that if I am able to get an MOT subsequent to the accident that the insurance cannot be invalidated and a claim would proceed as usual (FCA & Ombudsman guidelines) although the cases of this that I have found all appear to involve bodywork only repairs, nothing structural.

My issue is that due to structural damage (a hole to the offside frame rail as a result of the incident) the car will not pass an MOT in its current state although it would have done seconds prior to the incident.

I have found a garage that will weld the hole to get it through an MOT (not as a long term fix) but my concern is that this then begins to cloud the issue over road-worthiness for the insurance company who will likely spot upon an inspection of the damage, that a weld has been done to get it through the MOT. The car was absolutely roadworthy at the time of the incident.

The car has outstanding finance so any valuation payout will go to the finance companies pocket before mine and I have the (expensive) option of repairing myself. I think I'm correct that the insurers would payout market value rather than a trade in price? There's also insurance premium increases to consider.

Guidance as to the implications of a temporary weld to the structural rail and any insurance inspection as well as valuation for claim for repairs/write-off would be very welcome.

Thanks in advance.

dacouch

You don't need to get an MOT.

Your Insurers cannot decline your claim simply for not having an MOT.

They can only decline your claim if your vehicle is "Unroadworthy" and the vehicle being unroadworthy contributed to the claim.

I would recommend not getting the body work done as it will raise suspicions with the Insurers.

Aretnap

+1.

The general rule is that if you beach the terms of your policy the insurer can only use that as grounds to reject a claim if the claim itself was related to the breach.

So, for example, if your life insurance policy had a clause which said you weren't allowed to go skydiving your insurer could refuse to pay out if you died in a skydiving accident. However if you died of cancer they couldn't refuse to pay out just because they found out that you had been skydiving while the policy was in force.

Or if your car insurance policy required your car to be roadworthy and you had no working headlights the insurer could refuse a claim for an accident you caused by driving into something in the dark, but not for an accident that happened in daylight.

And if your policy said that you had to have an MOT... Well, in what circumstances can the lack of a piece of paper cause an accident? So the insurer could never deny a claim purely because you didn't have an mot regardless of what the policy said. Possibly they could refuse the claim if your car had no MOT AND it had a defect that would have been picked up by an MOT AND that defect caused or at least contributed to the accident.

So I'm not sure why you've got the idea that you need to get the car mot worthy now after the accident - it's the condition before the accident that matters. Getting an MOT would be one way of proving that the car was fine before the accident, but an MOT that failed only on points which had clearly been caused by the accident would be equally as good. But really it's for the insurer to prove that the car was unroadworthy if they want to refuse the claim. I'd wait and see what they say before I started spending any money on a car which is likely to be a write off.

Insurance should pay out market value, IE the price to buy an equivalent car from a dealer. Obviously this will be less than you paid (unless you bought it very recently) and possibly less than the outstanding finance (unless you have gap insurance to make up the difference). In days gone by they would be allowed to make a deduction if the car had no MOT (as a car with no MOT sells for less than one with an MOT) but the most recent version of the Ombudsman's guidance I've seen had changed that to say that they could make the deduction only if the car would probably have failed an MOT.

brp86

Thanks Aretnap - that's really useful info, do you have a link to the latest ombudsman's advice you just mentioned?

Aretnap

Here's a version of the Ombudsman's advice from a couple of years ago which made the point about making a deduction if the car would likely have failed an MOT


https://web.archive.org/web/20150320001942/https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/motor-valuation.html#13


The most recent version is here - but unfortunately to make the website more "user-friendly" they have removed most of the useful information!



https://www.financial-ombudsman.org.uk/publications/technical_notes/motor-valuation.html


AFAIK there haven't been any major changes to the underlying policies which would affect you though.