The tax disc dies today. How will you fill the void it leaves?

WHAT do a sticker with Southport’s coat of arms, a curious period reproduction of some 1970s paperwork and a Volkswagen Owners Club badge – even though I’ve never owned a VW – have in common?

Nope, they’re not prizes from the worst ever round of The Generation Game. They are, in fact, just three of the automotive ornaments competing for windscreen space in my small fleet of cheap used cars. As of today, you no longer need to display a tax disc in your car – and literally and metaphorically, the demise of this bit of DVLA bureaucracy is going to leave a big gap.

In case you hadn’t already heard, the DVLA has decided to do away with the little perforated discs. It means that for the first time since 1921, motorists won’t end up accidentally ripping them as they carefully try to free them from the bit of Swansea paperwork they’re posted out with, and the end of nosey neighbours trying to get one up on you when they point out your disc is a day out of date.

Naturally, there are downsides too, particularly if – like me – you love idly flicking through The Champion’s classifieds, hoping to find a rubber-bumper MG Midget for next to nothing. Thanks to some complicated and frankly rather boring changes to the law, you can no longer buy a car with six months’ tax thrown in as part of the deal – you have to pay for yours from scratch, and the seller has to ask for a refund for theirs. I’m keeping my fingers crossed the changes don’t spark another Passport Office-esque nightmare IT meltdown, but hopefully the new system should be second nature in six months’ time.

Nope, the real change for me is having a circular sea of emptiness in the bottom-left corner of my windscreen which no longer has to be filled with a redundant bit of paperwork. In my instance, I’ve already opted to fill the space left in my MX-5’s windscreen with a sticker celebrating Southport – a nice reminder of home when I spend most of my working week in deepest Cambridgeshire – while the MGB’s being treated to one of those period recreation tax discs that’s all the rage with classic car fans right now.

The possibilities are endless for that little circular wallet which will otherwise sit unloved and empty – you could replace your tax disc with a Liverpool FC badge, a photograph of Keira Knightley, whatever you choose.

In fact, my favourite suggestion was a colleague’s – just the words TAX IN PAST, scrawled on a circular bit of paper. 

I can just picture it now, plastered on the windscreen of a yellow Reliant Regal. Cushty, Rodders!

DVLA red tape leaves Life On Cars at the mercy of the French police

IS IT possible to break the law in order to avoid not breaking it?

That’s the rather perplexing scenario I’ve spent the past week pondering, after it transpired that in order to not flout this country’s laws I run the risk of simultaneously falling foul of another’s.

All this thanks to the DVLA, some red tape, a J-registered Saab and the Belgians. 

It all started a week or so ago when the state agency responsible for driving licences sent me a polite letter to remind me that the photo on mine was looking a little out of date, having been taken in a branch of Woolworths at a time when Britain’s two main talking points were the Iraq War and The Cheeky Girls. 

For the sake of £20, a new and equally embarrassing photo and filling out a form, I’d avoid getting a £1,000 fine. There was only one snag; it was a legal requirement to send off both parts of my driving licence with it. 

After a few minutes of moaning to anyone who’d care to listen, I duly obliged.

It’s an inconvenience, but the not the end of the world. Or at least it wasn’t until two days after posting the form off, when I got asked, for a business trip, to go to Belgium.

A business trip which is not only in the very near future but will involve co-driving a friend’s Saab 9000 across France on the long trip to Antwerp. Places which, should I get stopped by les Gendarmes, I’ll almost certainly get asked to produce the driving licence I no longer possess.

It’s an absurd state of affairs. In order to avoid breaking the laws of this country, I’ve been forced into a position where I’ll have to break the laws of at least one other country should I dare to do what I’m legally entitled to on the other side of the Channel.

A quick call to the DVLA didn’t help. Partly because it wasn’t an especially quick call and led me to believe that humankind has actually abandoned Swansea and left the agency’s phone-manning robots to fend for themselves, but because once I actually got past the computerized phone switchboard it turned out the poor girl at the other end of the line didn’t actually know how to help me.

Having explained that “Have you asked the authorities in France and Belgium?” wasn’t the answer I was looking for, she was happy to sell me a Certificate of Entitlement, which for a fiver will prove to the police you really are entitled to drive. Unfortunately, it also comes with a whopping great disclaimer which states it isn’t valid in other EU states.

It is ridiculous that, in the event of the DVLA requiring your licence back at renewal time, it has absolutely no procedure in place should you need to pop over to the continent.

I look forward to writing my next column from my cell in La Bastille.

The Ford Mondeo that doesn't exist

A SOUTHPORT motorist who was hoping to get into gear for the New Year has been told he can't - because the DVLA says his car doesn't exist.

Birkdale resident Howard Skelton has been trying to register a vehicle he bought from his son but so far his efforts have failed, because the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency, responsible for keeping track of the country's cars, have issued a Certificate of Destruction by mistake.

“It's incredibly frustrating when you try to do something by the book and get embroiled in this sort of nightmare,” he told Life On Cars.

“It should not be up to me to sort out their inefficiency. Hopefully they will see sense soon.”

Mr Skelton wanted to register the Ford Mondeo as his own but when he contacted the agency, based in Swansea, he was told the car no longer existed because it had been issued with a Certificate of Destruction, meaning it cannot be legally driven on the road.

He said that the DVLA have instructed him to take the car to one of its assessment centres, based in Preston, to rectify the mistake, but due to the car no longer being officially recognised it would be illegal to drive it there.

Mr Skelton has since got in touch with Southport MP and Life On Cars reader John Pugh to take the case further, who described the DVLA's stance on the issue as “Kafkaesque bureaucracy”.

“We wrote several letters on Mr Skelton's behalf to try and sort the situation out. We were told that Certificates of Destruction are issued by Authorised Treatment Facilities, and that the error was probably down to mistaken paperwork. Amazingly the DVLA showed no interest in getting to the bottom of what had happened,” he said.

“This exposes shocking bureaucracy, and a complete absence of common sense at the heart of this department. That the certificate had clearly been issued in error, yet expect a pensioner to have a car towed to Preston to verify its existence is beyond crazy. There is also a complete lack of communication between bodies that is inexcusable,” he said.

The DVLA responded by saying it could not it could not comment on individual cases, but a spokesman for the organisation did say:

“A Certificate of Destruction (CoD) is issued when a vehicle is presented to an Authorised Treatment Facility (ATF) for destruction. It is proof that the vehicle has, or will be, destroyed to strict environmental standards and it is a legal requirement that once a CoD has been issued no further changes of keeper can be recorded.

"In rare cases where a CoD may have been issued in error, DVLA will investigate further. In exceptional circumstances we will allow the car to be taxed to enable the car to be driven for an inspection. If the inspection is satisfactory, a V5C can then be issued.”

Have you had any motoring mishaps? Share your motoring stories with me by emailing david.simister@champnews.com