SORN penalties?

Krakkkers

Just rebuilding an old Motorcyle and have checked the SORN status and it says that the SORN/tax ran out in December 1997 and "You can declare your vehicle as SORN from today's date, please note that it is an offence to be the registered keeper of a vehicle that is not taxed and does not have a SORN declared. DVLA's Continuous Registration Enforcement Section may be in contact with you regarding this SORN."
What does this mean in practice as the bike has not been on the road and has been in bits, is there likely to be any penalty/follow up.

Herzlos

Is 1997 when it was SORNed? because that pre-dates the continual tax requirement, and it's presumably been SORN since then.?

Are you the registered keeper at the correct address?
Has it been sold since 1997? Because I think that's the only thing that'd cancel the SORN apart from exporting it or taxing it.

You're probably fine to just tax it and move on with your life, and argue that it's been SORN the whole time.

Krakkkers

I have only owned it since 2006 and am pretty sure that I must have sorned it at sometime so what do you think the 1997 date is about?
It had never been on the road since I owned it.

facade

SORN came in in January 1998, so probably that is where the running out in December 1997 came from.

In The Olden Days, you used to have to reaffirm the SORN every year, but presumably to save on postage they dropped this idea and made it so SORN lasts until it is next taxed.

I've got a 'bike like that too in the garage, I just had a look and the tax expired in 2006. I'm sure I would have SORN'd it at the time, but I've not heard anything from DVLA since.

I'm not going to risk waking them up though by running a status check though ;)

Ther isn't much you can do really except light the touchpaper and see what happens.