Another bad SORN experience
Barrie Jones has mentioned another SORN pitfall which is worth noting. (22.2.07)

If you have a car with a current tax disc and a current MOT but you do not bother to renew your insurance when it expires because the car is garaged and off the road, then you will quickly get an £80 fine from the DVLA for failing to declare SORN. Their logic is that an uninsured car must be off the the road so you have a statutory duty to notify them of SORN.

To be "off the road" in DVLA terms it does not mean the car is physically garaged off the public highway but it has been declared as off the road by completing a SORN - a statutory off road notice!
You must have evidence
of having made a SORN!

Links to other SORN pages on the V8 Website
SORN1 warning of new SORN arrangements
SORN2 laying up, what is the procedure?
SORN3 SORN case study
SORN4 DVLA's aggressive style
SORN5 take care with your SORN declaration
SORN6 SORN your V8 online with DVLA
SORN7 take care with SORNs
SORN8 renewing online
SORN9 another bad SORN experience
SORN10 can you SORN early?
Leaflets DVLA leaflets
Members' comments on SORN

Basically you have to assume that the DVLA are a bunch of shits who will use any loophole to take money from you.

Given that there are between one and two million unregistered, untaxed and uninsured cars on the road, they may have the same view of us.

I have a dismantled Morris Minor Traveller and, when I needed to get a new registration document, I made sure that I included a photograph of the car in its dismantled state with registration number showing (and took care to keep a copy of all the documents). I got away with that.

Clearly you have to deal with the Government with the same rigour that you would exercise if you wanted to buy a second hand car from Richard Nixon.

James Strachan
(22.2.07)