Safe Speed Forums

The DVLA invited responses to its recently published proposals to introduce a "change of keeper" fee for all used car transactions (that's around 7.5 million transactions per year at anything up to £7.50 per car), to charge something like £19 for renewal of the new ten-year photo card licence, and to bring in an annual registration fee of between £2.50 and £4.50 for all 29 million cars on UK roads, which might raise another £130 million.

Well, as Christopher Macgowan of the SMMT has been pointing out, "the Government already takes £4.4 billion a year in road tax and just got an extra £32.5 million from last year's massive hike in the new car registration fee. Continuous licensing also means fewer road tax dodgers and more income. So where is all the extra money going?"

He also says that "no business would survive if it passed the costs of going online to the customer, so why does the DVLA think this is acceptable?" The opinion in the motor industry is that the costs of introducing photo licences could have been absorbed "without hitting drivers in the pocket".

There's also that gloriously money-from-thin-air matter of the sale of personalised number plates. Last year, it raised a record sum just short of £75 million.

And so it goes on......

Any notion of charging an annual fee or a fee for transfer should be scrapped. This would be highly regressive (poorer people who make do with old cars have to change them a lot). It would also be an open invitation to simply pass the car on for cash forget the law, cutting the registration process out of the loop entirely. Many people do this already, so this can only get worse if you charge. The idea is to make it as attractive as possible for people to help you sort out your records. Even as things stands, your internal processes at the DVLA are barely effective and can not work without public support. In any case, such a high charge for such a small amount of service is intolerable to most people, especially as they feel they are gouged at the petrol pump anyway

Here's my response, which was posted to the DVLA site, at
DVLA. Suggest you do something similar.