A small question or 2 about SORN...

[vrykyl]

Ok, so a short while ago (roughly 2 weeks) I declared my car of the road - the MOT had a day left before it expired, and I had to wait until I got paid to have the money to pay for an MOT and the stuff I knew the car needed to pass...(about £300 inc MOT I reckon).

However, I didnt return my tax disk for a refund...its still got 6 months left on it.

Soooooooo, my questions are -

if I pop down the post office this week and declare my car back on the road, can I put the same original tax disc back in the window? its all still valid?
and...
Can I drive the car THE NEXT DAY straight to the garage for an MOT (ie. not drive it for any other purpose than to leave my house to get to the mot centre)? Itl obviously have tax and insurance...

cheers folks!

[SilentDeath]

You dont need to declare SORN on a mot failure and yes you can drive it to a prebooked mot test, ofcourse if its not prebooked then you need to be caught for it to matter

To declare it back on the road, one buys a tax disc, for which one also needs an mot. So since you have declared SORN, im not sure what happens with the tax disk, it might be void, in which case you would need to send it off for a refund, and then buy a new one...
But then you need an mot, and I have no idea if its ok to drive to an mot station without a tax disc. Also need an insurance certificate... which is bloody annoying if its in the post.

[tickedon]

I have found that trying to do anything properly in terms of taxing a car, insurance, MOT etc.. is circular. It seems that it's often impossible to meet all the rules in practice if something crops up. As long as you have it taxed (and it shows this on their database), you have a valid MOT, and you have valid insurance that's really you covered. I know that you can drive a car to an MOT location if pre-booked.

My advice though - call the DVLA advice line. They are normally pretty helpful. Even if it's just to point out the rules and explain that yes, in your case, it's really impossible to follow them (real situation I was in last month!).

[vrykyl]

Just a quick update - rang the dvla helpline - declaring SORN has made my old tax disc invalid, I cant get a new one without an MOT, and I can drive to the MOT centre without a tax disc as long as I dont stop and the test is prebooked (so the police can check if stopped).

cheers for your help guys!