minialice

Hi, we are moving back to the UK shortly, and I have yet to look at the actual form although I have read all the notes. Can't open the form yet as my UK mobile phone plays up and I need a code. I have two queires, firstly as a couple do we both need to fill in a form each although our belongings will be packed in together? Also we are driving a Portuguese car back to officialy scrap when we get there - do we need to list it as we dont want it to go to the DVLA as all info has to go back to Portugal. Thanks for any help - beginning to panic, so much to do.

Pulaski

You may experience considerable problems in scrapping a car not registered in the UK as scrap yards are required to verify ownership, to stop people stealing cars and having them crushed. Most, if not all, scrap yards have neither the time nor the interest in verifying ownership of vehicles registered in other countries. This issue has come up several times on BE, in relation to cars being scrapped in several EU countries, not just the UK.

So unless you have the space and equipment to engage in the dubious activity of dismantling, cutting up, and disposing of your car piecemeal (so it isn't glaringly obvious that you have cut up an entire car) you would likely be better off coming up with an alternative plan to assuming it will be easy to scrap your car in the UK without first needing to get it MOT'ed and registered with the DVLA.

Assuming that your car isn't total junk, your best bet might be to see if a dealer in LHD cars would take it off your hands while still registered in Portugal. .... Or even post on-line that you have a vehicle registered in Portugal available in the UK, as even selling it for £1, with a bill of sale (giving it away for free without documentation could create its own problems), would relieve you of a headache. If you retain it in the UK pending sale, your problems will become much harder to solve if it's registration and insurance in Portugal lapses.

minialice

I t hink I can - from what I have read - I need to use an ATF and get a certificate of destruction which I send back to Portugal IMT. ''To scrap a vehicle from another country in the UK, you must use an ATF. All of our partners are ATF registered meaning you’ll receive a certificate of destruction to prove that the vehicle has been destroyed. It is then your responsibility to notify the driving authority in the country where the vehicle is registered that it has been scrapped. Some countries also require you to remove and return the licence plate from the vehicle. We recommend you check with your local driving authority if you need to do this.'' I don't want to try and sell it in the UK as not sure if I can change ownership if I am not in Portugal - in Portugal we have to go along with the new owner to a local office to do this. We can't buy a UK car in Portugal to drive back as not legal to drive a UK car with Portuguese licence in Portugal anymore.

Pulaski

I'm not sure what you've quoted there, what the ATF is, and who is saying "all of our partners", but that sounds to me like what you would need to do, and assumes you can fund a scrap yard to go along with that. What you have copied into your post appears to be a collection of controls to ensure that a vehicle that is reported as scrapped has actually been scrapped, and the registration returned.

Whereas the issue that I described above is quite different, in some sense the opposite of what you have quoted, that a vehicle isn't scrapped unless the scrap yard can prove to a high degree of certainty, that the person handing over the car for scrapping is the legal owner and has the authority to have the car crushed.

In short, what you would like to do is certainly legally possible, but in practice, based on reported experience on BE, finding a scrap yard willing to accept and crush a vehicle not registered in the UK, may be a challenge.

ianandhelena

Re your second question-I filled in our TOR application and listed all our belongings as a whole. TOR was granted 2 days later, no questions.

Helen1964

I’m with Pulaski on this one.
You could try calling a few reputable scrapyards in the UK and asking whether they’d scrap the car even though it won’t have been registered in the UK.
And if they say yes, get them to confirm it in an email.

I’ve always understood, however, that you can’t dispose of a vehicle in the UK in any way - sale, transfer, scrap - unless it’s been registered with DVLA.
Hopefully we’ll still have our old French-registered van when we do our final drive to the UK to transport a few items we wouldn’t want to entrust to the removals company. But I’ve always assumed that the easiest solution after that will be to take the van back on the ferry to France and sell it for a song to the nearest garage.

Another consideration might be insurance. Perhaps this isn’t an issue in Portugal but I think in order to cancel our French insurance policy, we’ll need to show them that we’ve exported the car or sold or scrapped it, or reinsured it with a different company.