There is a serious problem with the owners of foreign registered vehicles, who flout the UK law by not registering and taxing their vehicles here.

If you live in the UK, if you work in the UK, you must immediately have a UK registration on your vehicle; the only exceptions are if you:

• work in      another European Union (EU) member state and use an EU-registered company car temporarily in the UK
• lease an EU-registered car and use this temporarily      in the UK

Drivers get away with it because temporary visitors to the UK are allowed to have vehicles here and use on our roads for 6 months (out of 12). So cheating owners pretend they are short term visitors, and drive on foreign plates for years.

Not only do these cretins fail to pay their due Road Tax (so drive on our roads for free when all law abiding citizens pay their way), but they don’t (and can’t) insure their vehicles either – so if they are involved in an accident they won’t pay out. (A vehicle with UK plates must have insurance according to UK Law, which means it must be insured with an authorised insurer who is a member of the MIB). They don’t have to bother with an MOT, or servicing, so you can have unsafe cars on the road. They can bash into your car without a care in the world, They are simply  irresponsible criminals.

Also, they can commit driving offences galore, and constant parking offences with impunity – nobody can trace their vehicle, as it isn’t registered to a UK address (so no fines or Court cases for them then!).

There are severe penalties if the law is not complied with and the Police have powers to seize and crush any vehicle they believe to be uninsured. Do they act? NO! The keeper of any vehicle displaying foreign registration plates that is stopped by the police, is responsible for demonstrating that they are eligible to use the vehicle in the UK without registering and licensing it in this country – why don’t the police stop vehicles and use these powers?

What are the other authorities doing about it? NOT A LOT!  Despite threats from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) going back some 7 years – they said they were going to clamp down on foreign registered vehicles that flout the UK registration and licensing laws, with enforcement measures that include wheel clamping and impounding foreign registered vehicles that don’t comply with UK laws. Leaflets and windscreen warning notices were to be placed on offending vehicles and persistent offenders find their vehicle wheel clamped and impounded and, if unclaimed, disposed of by crushing! Well, did it all happen? Don’t think so – where is the evidence?

A galling thing is if you live near an airport you see vehicles with foreign registrations with airport staff parking permits – which means that the airport authorities are colluding in their staff breaking the law.

 If you see a foreign registration vehicle parked regularly in your street for months on end – don’t bother to ring the DVLA or the Police (they won’t react! – to busy chasing properly registered vehicles.