30th November 2009.

Bugger.

You see, about 6 months ago I moved house. I phoned BT to cancel with them; they screwed up badly and cancelled my line too early. And then tried to bill me lots for it. I told Southern Water I wouldn’t be responsible for billing at my new address, they set up a new Direct Debit. I moved my bank accounts, my council tax, my power, my gas… I moved pretty much everything. Except the registration document for my car.

You see, whilst everything else could be done over the phone or internet, changing the address on your car requires actual writing and enveloping and posting. Faff. I had the document on the floor by my bed all this time, ready to fill in, I just didn’t get around to it.

The downside of not updating your address is that you don’t get the reminder by post to go update your tax, hence the expired disc. As it was a Sunday, there wasn’t really much I could do until the following day, except contemplate the potential fines.

The next day, I went to the Post Office; I couldn’t renew online as they’d send the tax disc to the old house. Sadly, the Post Office still lives in the dark ages; where the online tool automatically looks up your insurance/MOT the Post Office requires the physical documents. Trip home and back then.

Once armed with the appropriate documentation I paid my £120 and was legal to drive again. The lady in the Post Office also mentioned that if I was quick I could phone up the DVLA and pay the back-tax and escape a fine. This sounded good to me, but as the process of buying the tax disc had flagged that I’d missed a month I had to be quick.

A call to the central line suggested I /could/ pay the back-tax but had to send a cheque/postal order to my local DVLA office. More dark-ages. That meant actually locating my chequebook, and deciding which of the 3? chequebooks I had were valid.

You can find the begging letter I sent them here, should you need to do the same.

Yesterday in the post I received a receipt for my back-tax. Hopefully I’m in the clear :-/

The Road Traffic Act 1988 (Part VI Third-Party Liabilities, section 144) states

Section 143 of this Act does not apply to a vehicle owned by a person who has deposited and keeps deposited with the Accountant General of the Supreme Court the sum of £15,000, at a time when the vehicle is being driven under the owner’s control.

The Road Traffic Act 1991 updated this amount to be £500,000.

The laypersons translation of this, of course, is that you can drive without car insurance in the UK provided you deposit £500,000 with the “Supreme Court”.