POTENTIAL NEW INSURANCE RULES

We have been made aware by one of the specialist insurers, Heritage, that there are moves afoot to increase the scope of vehicle insurance, this following a legal case where a person in the EU was injured on private land by a farm trailer, and has successfully sued the towing tractor’s owner, who it is deemed should have had his tractor, etc. insured, even though it was only used on private land.

If your car is on SORN then you currently don’t need to tax it or insure it. The implication of this becoming UK law would be that you would have to insure anything that can move under its own steam irrespective of whether it is on public land – and potentially even just be pushed / pulled – since this issue came up from a trailer, not even the tractor. One implication might be that your barn find restoration sat in the garage, and indeed even your spares car, might need also to be insured, legally speaking. Of course, quite how the Government would monitor and enforce all of this, is open to conjecture.

You can see why an insurance company would think this is a good thing as case law seems to put them in the frame anyway and this allows them to charge more for their risk.
It seems there is some potential for derogation whereby “use” could be defined in a way that doesn’t make it compulsory to insure everything that has wheels – whether that is a potential outcome of the consultation isn’t currently clear. At the moment it appears that this situation is leading the Government to reconsider the definition of a motor vehicle, having a list of so called ‘In Scope’ vehicles which include many which are not normally operated on the public highway, such as golf carts, ATV’s, possibly even electrically powered ride on children’s toys. If you want to find out more then follow this link.

http://us8.campaign-archive1.com/?u=a5ee800370b54f490c87542d2&id=f63ddd6d4e&e=72ed4415ef

The government have thrown this out to consultation with a final closing date of March 31st 2017 and we will be printing some more detailed information in the March/April edition of FP.