Order of changes? (Registered Keeper, Insurance & Tax)

penny9

Sorry if this seems obvious, but I’m not quite sure the order of making the following changes and so looking for advice of how exactly to go about it, please. 

Current situation: 
Person 1 (me): registered keeper (& owner) of car and policy holder (& main driver) for car insurance due for renewal on 21st June
Person 2 (another member of my household): named driver on above car insurance 

Situation we would like to be in: 
Person 2: registered keeper (& owner) of above car and policy holder (& only driver) for car insurance 
Person 1: no longer driving at all, so completely unlinked to the car & insurance 


I know I need to transfer the registered keeper from person 1 to person 2 and person 2 will need insurance and tax, but I’m just not sure what order to do it in and when? 

Best to wait until the 21st June and then do it all in one day? Or get started a few days before, so that there is an overlap? 

I would like to ensure we keep additional costs to a minimum and try to minimise the amount of time when perhaps neither of use would be permitted to drive the car at all (for a few hours or even a few days?), as we only have this one car in the household. 

I have already contacted my current insurance company and they offered to make the change at the point of renewal (21st June), but their quote to do this was much higher than quotes for new policies from other insurance companies, so I have already stopped the automatic renewal and the insurance will just run until 21st June with them before stopping.

Thank you 

DullGreyGuy

You would sell or gift the car to your associate. You each send off the relevant parts of the V5c (maybe you can do it online now?). You phone your insurers and advise them to cancel the policy and pay the cancellation fee. At the same time your associate buys their own insurance declaring themselves the owner and keeper and 0 years NCD (assuming they haven't recently ended another policy to transfer the discount from.

TooManyPoints

And bear in mind that you will have to pay the Vehicle Excise Duty ("Tax") for June twice. You will get a rebate for the unexpired months (which will not include June) and the new RK will have to tax it from 1st June. There is a way round this by declaring the car SORN and keeping it off road, but I doubt you want the hassle.

wongataa

1. Change the registered keeper. You can do this online to do it pretty much instantaneously. Any unused months of tax will be refunded to you.

2. New keeper, Person 2, taxes car.

3. Cancel your insurance policy. If stop the renewal so you don't have to cancel do the above when your insurance lapses.

4. Person 2 takes out an insurance policy on the car.

Grumpy_chap

penny9 said:

Current situation: 

Person 1 (me): registered keeper (& owner) of car and policy holder (& main driver) for car insurance due for renewal on 21st June
Person 2 (another member of my household): named driver on above car insurance 

Situation we would like to be in: 
Person 2: registered keeper (& owner) of above car and policy holder (& only driver) for car insurance 
Person 1: no longer driving at all, so completely unlinked to the car & insurance 

What is the relationship between person 1 & person 2 (other than just members of the same household)?

There may be no need to change the RK.  That would mean no double-VED and no increase in the recorded number of RK's, which some people consider when buying a car as you will at some point sell the car on.

I have been insured as the main driver for a car where my wife is RK for many years.  The insurance proposal asks the question, and you need to be honest in the information you give them, but it really made no difference to the insurance quotes the fact that I was not the owner / RK.

Herzlos

Run some quotes for person 2 where the registered keeper is still person 1 and see if it makes a difference. A few years ago I did the same where I was the main user of a car that was still owned by my dad and the insurance premium difference was negligable.

If the keeper doesn't hurt the quotes, then just let your insurance company know you don't want to renew and have person 2 start a policy for the 21st. It'd also be worth checking with the current insurer to see if they'll honour any no-claims accumulated by person 2 as a named driver. It's not common but some insurers will do it.

penny9

Thanks everyone for the replies. 

I didn’t want to keep the car in my name as I might move at some point in the next couple of years and we wouldn’t then be living in the same household, so easier to have everything transferred all in one go. Doesn’t matter how many registered keepers the car ends up having, as we will never sell it, it’s already 20+ years old and it will be in the family until it eventually needs to be scrapped (just like 2 other cars we’ve had between us).

I let my insurance just end without renewal. I did enquire with them about whether the named driver could benefit from their years of being on my policy, but even with that taken in to consideration the best price they could offer £450 and I already knew from running quotes beforehand with completely different insurers that even with zero no claims bonus several other companies were offering £380 to £425 anyway. In the end we found that some insurers have an additional question on the quote form (that most other companies don’t have), so after telling them you have zero no claims bonus they then ask if you have experience driving another car and there is an option to put « yes, as a named driver » and then a maximum option of « 5+ years » for how long you were claims free on that vehicle.  These companies gave quotes around £250 to £280. 

We decided in the end to SORN the car and save double paying the tax for June. 

So we did the registered keeper transfer (via DVLA website - only possible between 7am and 7pm), started the insurance (bought online) and requested SORN (possible via the website 24hrs a day and straight away after transfer by using the new keeper supplement from the log book) all on the same day and then just taxed again online from 1st July.