Rise of the ‘ghost owners’: 18,000 UK vehicles in use without proper records | DVLA
It was revealed that more than 18,000 vehicles were being used in the UK without proper records of where their owners lived; It’s part of what the Labor MP describes as a growing problem of “ghost owners” who are not held accountable for their driving.
According to a freedom of information request made to the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, 18,260 vehicles were listed on its records as being registered to the DVLA’s own address, meaning the owner’s location was unknown.
Labor MP Sarah Coombes, who campaigned on what she said were overly lax rules allowing people to easily buy cloned or untraceable number plates, called on the force to take urgent action. The West Bromwich MP was expected to speak at the DVLA debate in the House of Commons on Thursday.
While the agency said most vehicles without addresses were owned by car dealers and so there was no problem, the British Parking Association, which submitted the FoI request, argued that the real problem was probably much bigger than the figures suggested.
It is stated that members found that between 10 per cent and 20 per cent of requests made to the DVLA for ownership data returned no results, partly due to vehicles registered without an address, but also due to related issues such as cloned number plates registered to another car.
coombes called a crackdown on the number of official suppliers of license plates. There are now more than 34,000 of these and people can register as a supplier with the DVLA without any criminal or other background checks for a single payment of £40.
Last year, an investigation by government consultants found that more than 130 registered number plate suppliers said they were willing to sell cloned number plates.
Another increasingly common way to evade driving tickets is through so-called ghost plates, which use a reflective coating that cannot be read by police cameras.
Coombes said: “Failure in DVLA systems is allowing dangerous driving and criminality to proliferate unchecked on our roads. The UK’s deplorable number plate regulation is leading to the use of ghost and cloned number plates for everything from car racing to drug dealing and even murder.”
“We are also seeing an epidemic of ‘ghost owners’ where a vehicle does not have a registered caretaker, meaning speeding, hit and run, and worse, go completely unpunished because the driver cannot be found.
“We are all paying the price for these untraceable drivers through higher car insurance premiums. This failed highway regulation is undermining trust and safety and the DVLA needs to take urgent action to address this.”
Accordingly a parliamentary question According to the question asked by the MP, the DVLA has not fined a single person for not updating their address with their driving record in the last five years.
The DVLA has been contacted for comment.
