Immatricution warning!

[Gyn_Paul]

[quote]Do the Prefecture always keep the English Log Book when issuing a Carte Grise? We have a private number plate on our car and will need the Log Book to transfer the number plate. Regards Jacks[/quote]

Would advise you to sell the plate and re-register in the UK before trying to French-plate it. Since 'cherished numbers' are unknown here you may find the number simply ceases to exist when you successfully (?) re-immatriculate the vehicle.

p

[Will]

[quote]'Fraid I'll have to disagree with Will on one point. I know from experience that V5's (and driving licences) don't always find their way back to DVLA and the excuse I was given "sometimes things get l...[/quote]

Thanks for that MH - I can quite believe that. I've often been asked for advice on this point and have always recommended the export certificate to be on the safe side but have often been told in return that it isn't necessary in France because the French authorities will always notify DVLA. In addition some people say that their prefectures won't accept an export certificate and insist on the original registration document, something I find hard to believe but can accept. Still, the new system looks far easier to deal with.

The real benefit of properly exporting a vehicle is that not only does it get you out of the UK road tax loop, you also get a refund of unused tax (just as you would by the alternative, somewhat less official, means of SORN declaration). As most people on these forums seem anxious to save a few pennies by any means I would have thought this would make it attractive to do it properly.

[mascamps.com]

Just for a bit of additional clarity here... I take it that if you declared SORN but kept driving the car in France, it wouldn't actually be legal? Well, I imagine that perhaps it might until the MOT ran out but I take it that it definitely isn't after the MOT expires (presumably you couldn't get it renewed without breaking the law to get to the UK for another MOT)?

 

Arnold

 

[mascamps.com]

Just for a bit of additional clarity here... I take it that if you declared SORN but kept driving the car in France, it wouldn't actually be legal? Well, I imagine that perhaps it might until the MOT ran out but I take it that it definitely isn't after the MOT expires? Presumably you couldn't get it renewed without breaking the law to get to the UK for another MOT.

 

Arnold

 

[Motorhead]

As far as HM's government is concerned a SORNed vehicle should not be kept on a public road anywhere but since they have no jurisdiction anywhere outside the UK this is just another case of them getting above themselves.

I't is however perfectly legal to drive an untaxed and un MOT'd vehicle on a public road in UK provided you are travelling directly to a prebooked MOT test and theoretically you should be able to get off  the ferry at Dover and drive to a test in Aberdeen. To my knowledge there has never been a test case to decide upon what is a reasonable distance to the test. Anyone, though, could find themselves subject to a first test case; so really it's a case of "how lucky do you feel".

My hunch is that you would probably be Ok untill the Scottish border as the legal system there is much more reliant on and ready to invoke case law.

[opas]

We recently re registered a second vehicle here , we did not have a `log book` just the export cert and this was accepted without query.

the lady at the impots ,after seeing the receipt for the car(in sterling) then said she needed to know what the exchange rate was when we bought it, didn`t accept Mr Os suggessted rate (near as dammit within a few cents) and disapeared to another department....only to return and ask what rate we had orriginaly given and worked it out on her calculator(we already had it written down).

Just out of curiosity, what colour is an in date tax disc in the UK.....we have a brit in the village, on private reg, been here over 2 years now, Why would anyone want to drive 1000 miles each year to MOT a car?

Mrs O

[Tony F Dordogne]

"we have a brit in the village, on private reg, been here over 2 years now, Why would anyone want to drive 1000 miles each year to MOT a car"

We've done just that because when we checked with our insurance company, they told us that they wouldn't cover us in France if we had a bump if the car wasn't street legal in the UK - but our car is going back to our daughter this year after we buy a French car and we needed to go back anyway for a family thing.

And in my area there are a D and an L registered UK car running around, apparently been here for years - not to mention the UK registered plumbers van with a UK telephone number on it which leafletted our car in Champion car park a few weeks agoi touting for work!  

[mascamps.com]

I'd forgotten about that "enroute to the MOT" exemption.

If there's a distance limit then it's quite a ways from Dover as Northern Ireland (for reasons that nobody understands) runs their own MOT system so I could, in principle, drive from Dover to Belfast on the exemption.

So, if you wanted to stretch the law to near breaking point, it sounds like you could have a continual SORN declaration (hence avoiding the road tax) yet do a once a year MOT to keep things legal in France.

I suspect that there are a considerable number of brits in France who totally ignore any semblance of having their car legally registered anywhere going by the number of cars with brit plates and no road tax disc running around here. If they have declared SORN (not necessarily essential if they've sold up in the UK I suppose), is that reported to the French authorities?

 

Arnold

 

[Motorhead]

 If there's a distance limit then it's quite a ways from Dover as Northern Ireland (for reasons that nobody understands) runs their own MOT system so I could, in principle, drive from Dover to Belfast on the exemption.

I'm not totally up to date on the ferry situation but I'd have thought you'd be better off going through the Republic. Driving from Dover to NI would (I think) entail going through Dumfries & Galloway Constabulary land. Like I said before, they'd be far more likely to raise a test case against you in Scotland and D&G has the most nazified traffic division outside of north Wales. Scots law is far more reliant on case law than the English version which in practise means that judges have far more freedom to make thing up as they go along.

In NI the MOT stations are controlled directly by the government rather than franchised out to private businesses because otherwise it would just be another racket for the paramilitaries

So, if you wanted to stretch the law to near breaking point, it sounds like you could have a continual SORN declaration (hence avoiding the road tax) yet do a once a year MOT to keep things legal in France.

Yes but you'd have to trailer the untaxed car back from the MOT to the ferry.

is that reported to the French authorities?

Possibly but probably ignored because it aint done in French.

[Happy Expat]

Reckon the ultimate mickey-take is the LDV van seen at Bergerac airport on UK plates with a local French telephone number on it. Not a UK one in sight ...

Bob & Jane (47)

[mascamps.com]

Yes, the Republic is always a good route. I think that the Scotland route would be OK though if you were travelling with a reservation for an MOT in NI as we just can't get them MOT'd on the mainland and therefore could quite be travelling that sort of distance for legit reasons.

I don't think it's anything to do with paramilitaries anymore if it ever was. Very much jobs for the boys I'd say. It's a real pain whatever the reason is.

So, if you wanted to stretch the law to near breaking point, it sounds like you could have a continual SORN declaration (hence avoiding the road tax) yet do a once a year MOT to keep things legal in France.

Yes but you'd have to trailer the untaxed car back from the MOT to the ferry.

Unless, of course, you had the test done in Newry or Dover, depending on the exact location of the MOT stations. In either case you'd need minimal distance on the trailer. Interesting option but a bit extreme to avoid £150 or so!

 

It's not just Bergerac that's like that either. Quite a considerable number of cars in Perpignan and even as far south as Girona are UK registered but obviously owned by people who live around here.

 

Arnold

[Anton Redman]

I'd forgotten about that "enroute to the MOT" exemption

The exemption applies to a pre arranged test at the nearest appropriate MOT station. Might work for Northern Ireland but I have some doubts.

[mascamps.com]

The exemption applies to a pre arranged test at the nearest appropriate MOT station. Might work for Northern Ireland but I have some doubts.

If it works for Dover (or whatever ferry port you took the car to), it would also have to work for Larne in NI as that is the nearest MOT station for us with NI registered cars. We don't have the option of getting the MOT done on the mainland. In practical terms, I really can't see anyone driving from even northern France, all the way up England, across Scotland and over on the ferry to Larne to get their MOT done. The petrol alone would be £100 or more before you count the two ferries.

Well, I suppose it might be crazy, but given the number of UK number plates knocking around presumably a considerable number of people do this kind of thing, at least as far as Dover anyway. The population of NI is about 1/40th of that of the rest of the UK so perhaps some people are motoring all the way up the country. Apart from mine, I've not seen any NI reg plates way down in the south but then there aren't even as many GB plates as you'd get further north either - maybe 15 or 20 in the airport so statistically there shouldn't be any more than my one there.

 

Arnold

 

[Will]

Regarding SORN, although I agree that under normal circumstances nobody is likely to find out, it does strike me that if the French authorities needed to trace a British registered vehicle via DVLA (e.g. caught on speed camera or similar) and it turned out you were driving around under a SORN there could be a spot of bother in store. Also, knowing how some insurers look for ways to avoid paying out in the event of a claim, if they found you had SORN rather than road tax they may well disallow a claim on the grounds that the vehicle isn't UK road legal. Just conjecture, I know, but on those grounds it doesn't seem like a particularly wise option.

Also, on the old forum there was a topic started by somebody who said that he had been advised by somebody at DVLA that he could take a car to France under SORN, then a while later received a demand for back tax plus a notice of prosecution for using an untaxed vehicle. I don't recall what the eventual outcome was, but it does appear that there are ways that DVLA can find out. No idea how they trace you in France, but it appears they can.

[mascamps.com]

I've no doubt that they can trace you in specific instances but if you just get on the ferry and don't come back, they can't.

To be honest, I think the whole SORN thing is a bit of a nonsense for the likes of ourselves if you're working on getting the vehicle in question reregistered in France. Last time we were looking into it, none of the options that they gave us on the form was applicable to us.

We were in the same boat re the notice of prosecution. In spite of having told them that we were going to France the next month, quite some time later we received the notice of prosecution just the week before our redirection subscription ran out. They appear to assume that the French will tell them immediately that a vehicle is now officially in France yet there isn't any requirement to officially export a car anymore and the only notice that they'll get is when it's reregistered, potentially a year or more later. In fact, in the case of our RAV, it may never be registered here (entirely legally too - it ain't up to driving anywhere at the moment).

I think that the arrival of SORN was a good thing in that it will go a long way to reducing the number of untaxed cars in the UK but they need to consider the likes of ourselves - the last time I looked at the form, none of the options were applicable to us.

 

Arnold

 

[Motorhead]

The exemption applies to a pre arranged test at the nearest appropriate MOT station. Might work for Northern Ireland but I have some doubts.

I'm sure that's what the law meant to say. but did it actually say it Anton. Ive never found it actually detailed in the literature, can you point out exactly where it is?