Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answers of 18 November 2016 to Question 50859 and 19 December 2016 to Question 55636, and with reference to the article entitled DVLA works with police and HM Revenue and Customs to crack down on illegal foreign registered vehicles, published on the gov.uk website on 30 January 2015, what assessment has been made of (a) the number of illegal foreign registered vehicles on the roads in the UK and (b) the effectiveness of the DVLA working with the police and HM Revenue and Customs to tackle the presence of such vehicles.

The Department for Transport does not hold information about the number of foreign registered vehicles circulating illegally in the UK.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) continues to work with police forces to address the issue of foreign registered vehicles which stay in the UK longer than six months in any 12 month period without being registered or licensed here. A pilot, which was a joint initiative between the DVLA, the Central Motorway Police Group and Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (HMRC), ran between November 2014 and February 2015. The pilot involved six police forces, which used information provided by HMRC about foreign vehicles that had been in the UK for more than six months. As a result of this trial, 703 vehicles were seized, of which 500 were reclaimed following payment of the appropriate fees. The remaining 203 vehicles were not claimed within the allotted time and were destroyed.

Currently, 17 police forces have acquired devolved DVLA powers which enable them to take appropriate action against non-compliant foreign registered vehicles.