DVLA fine for being uninsured

Gavin78

My wife has recieved a letter today from the DVLA to say the her car didn't have insurance on the 23/5/23 with a fine for £100 if not paid by July or £50 if paid before 24 June.

The car was written off at christmas and taken away by the insurance company in February we were paid out over 3 months ago and have a new car now this is insured.

Is this a scam letter going around I didn't think the DVLA had anything to do with car insurance and it was to do with car TAX.

I told my wife to ring the DVLA direct and not deal with the letter.

Rover_Driver

The DVLA deal with that offence - s144A (1), Road Traffic Act 1988. 'If a motor vehicle registered under the Vehicle Excise and Registration Act 1994 does not meet the insurance requirements, the person in whose name the vehicle is registered is guilty of an offence.'
The DVLA would be claiming that your wife was the registered keeper on 23rd May, and as the vehicle was not insured, she is liable.
If she did not inform the DVLA of the transfer to the insurance company, she could still be shown as the registered keeper.

Aretnap

The DVLA enforce the continuous insurance rules so if her car has not been correctly recorded as having been scrapped/ or transferred it:s entirely likely that she would eventually get a fixed penalty from them.

It sounds like either she, the insurer or the salvage merchant have made a mistake with the paperwork so she is still recorded as the registered keeper of the old car, which is now showing as uninsured. What did she do with the V5C registration document when the car was taken away?

summer_daze009

It’s not a scam letter, although you should have received an Insurance Advisory letter informing you that the vehicle appears to be uninsured before the DVLA send you a fixed penalty fine.

What did you do with the V5C when it was written off? Did you inform DVLA that it was written off and send the rest of the V5C to the insurance company? As the registered keeper it is your responsibility to do so

https://www.gov.uk/written-off-vehicle

CliveOfIndia

Unfortunately it's not a scam.  It's part of the "continuous insurance" rules that were bought in some years ago.  Basically, if a car is taxed it must also be insured.  This is why it's really important to notify a change of keeper (or else do a SORN) immediately.

It's similar to the situation where your car is off the road for a while (as no doubt happened to a lot of people during Covid).  It's fine to have the car parked on your driveway without insurance (at least, from a legal standpoint), but you must also SORN the car, otherwise you'd fall foul of the same rule.

Ditzy_Mitzy

I've been involved in a similar mess-up, albeit one predating the continuous insurance requirements, whereby a scrapman's letter informing the DVLA that he had purchased my old car got lost in the post.  That resulted in various letters being sent to me, as previous keeper, demanding that the car was either taxed or declared SORN.  It was solved by speaking to the scrapman and asking him to contact the DVLA on my behalf to confirm he had broken the car up.  Fortunately he was amenable and the whole thing went away.  

You'll need to get in touch with whoever scrapped the car and ask them to deal with it.  The DVLA ought to retract the fine, one hopes, if this is a case of administrative error.  

Gavin78

The guy never asked for the V5 document he just took the car away. We did get a letter before this one but just assumed it was lagging behind being updated by the insurance company. We assumed it would all be dealt with by the insurance who updated the system. to say the car was a write off. We were never informed of having to do anything further by them

Infact the whole insurance thing was a mess. Wife was insured by Saga who turns out it was actually AXA, who passed it all onto Enterprise as we got the hire car from them while it was all being sorted out. Enterprise also dealt with the car company to look at the car and the company that came and collected the car "eventually" It was then passed onto IMS who dealt with the actual payout of the car and then onto another company who actually dealt with chasing it up.

But the upshot was we did get a letter before this one but hadn't been told we needed to do anything.

Who should be contact the old insurance company or the scrapman that took the car? He never took the V5 so what do we do at this point?

Rover_Driver

As in earlier posts, the registered keeper is required to notify the DVLA that a vehicle had been disposed of and to who, not, as in your case, the insurance company or scrapman.  An Earlier post has a link to the .gov website explaining how.

molerat

Unfortunately car dealers, scrap merchants and insurance companies assure you they will deal with all the necessary paperwork but in law the responsibility is on the registered keeper and any penalties will head in your direction.  The moral of the story is to always do it yourself.

sheramber

When the insurance wrote off our car they told us to send the appropriate part of the V5 to DVLA  and send the rest to them.

Rover_Driver

sheramber said:

When the insurance wrote off our car they told us to send the appropriate part of the V5 to DVLA  and send the rest to them.

If by post, that is how the registered keeper notifies the DVLA of the transfer . They need to send the completed yellow ‘sell, transfer or part-exchange your vehicle to the motor trade’ section of the V5C to the DVLA, and the rest to the new owner (insurance Co. etc.)