The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC) and the police have teamed up to identify and take action against foreign motorists who drive in the UK illegally.
Foreign vehicles must be registered and licensed in the UK when they have been here more than six months in any 12-month period.
But it is estimated that up to 350,000 foreign registered vehicles entered the UK and overstayed the 6-month exemption period without registering and licensing between 2010 and 2013, costing the taxpayer £60m every year in lost tax revenue.
The new trial, which starts on 3rd November and will run until February 2015, will see HMRC share information with six police forces on foreign vehicles that have entered the UK and that may have overstayed the permitted six months in any 12-month period.
This will enable police to seize and impounded the vehicles of those who have overstayed. The registered keeper will have to pay a £200 release fee and a £160 surety fee, plus storage fees, to get the vehicle back.
The DVLA will also issue the registered keeper with an out-of-court settlement demand for the unpaid tax, which will lead to a prosecution if the keeper fails to pay up.
Transport Secretary Patrick McLoughlin said: ‘These vehicles are a danger on our roads and the government is determined to crack down on foreign drivers who deliberately refuse to register and license their vehicles. We will use all of the information available to us to make sure we take tough action where necessary to keep our roads safe.’
RAC head of external affairs Pete Williams said: ‘The RAC has been very vocal in calling for a solution to this problem so this announcement is good news for all law-abiding British motorists who have rightly felt aggrieved that foreign-registered vehicles are allowed to get away with not paying Vehicle Excise Duty after being in the country for more than six months.
‘Now a solution is to be trialled, we will be on the way to discovering how many foreign vehicles we actually have in the UK. This will ultimately mean that the Treasury will gain more tax revenue which we can only hope will be put towards improving the desperate state of our roads – a constant source of frustration to motorists.
Just as we don’t know the true number of foreign cars in the UK that should be paying Vehicle Excise Duty – “car tax”, we also don’t know how many vehicles require MoTs to make sure they are roadworthy and can be insured, and similarly, how many need to be traced to pay speeding fines generated by safety cameras. The trial will naturally help to make our roads safer as it should reduce the number of foreign vehicles being driven in the UK without MoTs in an unroadworthy condition.’
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