Continuous insurance enforcement

What is being proposed?

The Road Safety Act 2006 introduced a new offence of being the registered keeper of a vehicle which does not have insurance in a bid to tackly the 2 million uninsured drivers on Britain's roads. The Department for Transport has consulted on how the offence will be enforced. Their proposal is for:

DVLA’s vehicle keeper database and the motor insurance database will be compared to identify those vehicles which are not recorded on the motor insurance database.
In the first instance a warning letter will be sent to the registered keeper informing them that their vehicle does not appear to be insured.
The registered keeper may do one of the following:
- Inform DVLA that they are no longer the registered keeper - sold, sorn’d etc and provide proof of this
- Inform DVLA that the vehicle is stolen and provide a crime reference number
- Confirm with your insurer that the vehicle is insured and present on the motor insurance database
A second check will be conducted of both databases and if the vehicle is still showing as uninsured the registered keeper will be issued with a £100 fixed penalty notice.
If the penalty notice is not made the vehicle will be immobilised, clamped, and ultimately disposed of. Additionally the registered keeper will be liable to court prosecution for the new criminal offence.

How will this impact members?

Members as the registered keepers' of their vehicles have a statutory duty to make sure the vehicle is insured when it is being used on the UK roads. To ensure a penalty is not issued under the new legislation members' who do not have direct responsibility for insuring the vehicle need to consider their options for making sure the vehicle has insurance and is present on the motor insurance database.

Whilst we lobbied for the ability for members' to transfer liability for fines to the customer this was not achieved as the legislation places the burden on the registered keeper to make sure insurance is in place.

What are we working with Government on?

We are working with the DVLA and insurance companies, who will be issuing the warning letters, on a process which will allow a single warning letter to cover multiple vehicles and the potential for the warning letter to be sent to members electronically.

In addition, we are in dialogue with the administrators of the Motor Insurance Database to allow members regular and user friendly access to the database so that they can check their vehicles are present on the database.

The scheme is likely to be implemented at some point in 2010.