UK law stipulates that you cannot drive or park your car on any public road in the UK without having or paying for car tax.
And, even if your car is parked on private property, it is a legal requirement to have a Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN) in place with the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) otherwise you can be fined up to £2,500 and/or prosecuted.
According to the DVLA, approximately 3.4m vehicles are SORNed in the UK every year. However, during the first lockdown in March 2020, in just one month, a whopping half a million money-savvy motorists declared their vehicle as being off the road to save money on tax and car insurance.
So when is a SORN required, how do you arrange it and how long does a SORN last? Find out everything you need to know below.
You need to SORN your car or any other type of vehicle if:
Other reasons you may have a car declared off the road are:
Note: Even drivers of electric cars (or disabled drivers) that may be exempt from paying tax still need to tax or SORN their car with the DVLA. Also, even if a car is sorned when you purchase or receive it, you cannot transfer a SORN and must independently SORN the vehicle yourself in your own name.
If your vehicle is SORNed, you cannot legally park or drive on any public roads; you can only keep your car on private property (i.e. a driveway or garage).
The ONLY time you can legally drive your car on a public road if it’s SORNed is if you’re directly driving it to an MOT testing garage and have a pre-booked test. So if your MOT expires while your car is SORNed, then you are legally entitled to drive your untaxed car to an MOT garage as you can’t tax a car without a valid MOT certificate.
Other than that, you can drive your car on private property (i.e. not a public road), but unless you have acres of private land or peacocks for pets, it’s likely you’ll only be able to drive more than a couple of metres!
To declare your car off the road and register a SORN with the DVLA you will need one of the following documents to hand:
*If your log book has been stolen, damaged, lost or destroyed, you can apply for a duplicate log book online. You will need to pay a fee of £25 and will be asked to provide the registration number and VIN/chassis number of your vehicle together with the name and postcode on your log book.
Alternatively, you can apply by:
Additional documents you will or may need include a valid:
Certain types of vehicles like electric cars, diesel cars (TC49) that meet the RDE2 standard and petrol cars (TC48) are exempt from paying vehicle tax because they are environmentally friendly with no CO2 emissions. Conversely, cars with higher CO2 emissions or that are worth more than £40,000 have to pay more tax.
There are also different tax rates depending on when your car was first registered:
If you want to find out the amount of tax payable on a new unregistered or used car, you can click here to make an online enquiry with the Vehicle Certification Agency.
If you’re disabled but meet the legal obligations for drivers and the eligibility criteria for vehicle tax exemption, you will not have to pay vehicle tax.
To qualify, you will need to receive the:
You can also get 50% off vehicle tax if you’re in receipt of the PIP standard rate mobility component.
Visit the Government’s website for full details on eligibility and how to claim.
The only way you can ‘unsorn’ your car is by taxing it; you cannot apply for DVLA SORN removal as your car is either declared as being on a public road by being taxed or declared as being off public roads by SORN.
A SORN on a vehicle will last for an infinite period and will only need to change if you sell a car, start parking or driving a car on public roads, scrap it or permanently export it.