How do travellers register their vehicles with the DVLA?
To get a V5, or even a driving licence, you need a permanent address.
And what about insurance?
|
Interestingly - well, it is to me anyway - I have been wondering the same thing about the situation in France, where there are very many travelling people and vehicles have to be registered in the departement where the owner lives.
So an international answer would be welcome as well.
Just as an aside, and maybe only to be appreciated if you are as old as me and a jazz afficionado - the travellers' transit site on the outskirts of Limoges is on the Rue Django Reinhardt...
|
|
I've met people who live on canal barges full time who have driving licences. Some have fully legal cars and mopeds so is the statement you need a permanent address to own a vehicle true?
Edited by daveyjp on 30/01/2008 at 12:22
|
|
|
|
As far as the UK is concerned they don't and in France its a brave man that goes near a travellers site.
|
|
|
|
How do travellers register their vehicles with the DVLA?
they dont
To get a V5 or even a driving licence you need a permanent address.
None of of those two either
And what about insurance?
Dont be silly - do you need to ask?
|
And what about insurance?>>
If you get hit by a traveller's vehicle then, at best, you'll be offered cash. At worst, you'll be offered a sprig of lucky heather. The police daren't touch 'em.
|
|
|
|
Don't know if it would be legal nowadays but I recall a French friend of mine renting a PO Box in the GPO in Edinburgh years ago and having all his "official" correspondence sent there. Seemed to work at the time.
|
|
|
Friends had a horse trailer stolen. It had their postcode in very large lettering on the roof. It was ID'd from the air by a chum with a microlight, on a travellers site. Police were told, and they advised the victim to claim on insurance. They were not entering the site for £2k's worth of trailer.
I spotted a 4x4, clearly being used by hare coursers, a popular activity with travellers. As I turned off the main road I saw the local Police LR, so I waved them down, gave them the location and reg, and went home. Heard next day that four men plus dogs were seen walking down the road to the local train station soon afterwards. A call to my friendly Plod and I was told that none of the four would admit to owning it, so it was seized on the spot.
|
|
|
I was told the following by a beat copper overseeing the removal of travellers from a piece of waste ground near my old house, and surveying three wrecked vehicles (and other undescribable things) left behind.
Usually current reg to 5 yr old cars bought cash (travellers only deal in cash), not taxed beyond anything that came with the car, not insured and not registered to anyone. Most are actually bought legitimately believe it or not. Our little lot were using an X5, a current plate Merc E-class and a Volvo XC90 among other things.
When it reaches the end of its life, it's given to the kids to rally around in (as we assume with a Mondeo which had been reported many times being driven round the residential streets like a lunatic by a bunch of suspiciously young looking kids and which was left smashed to bits in a ditch in a field they were vacating), or dumped or set alight (like the Transit and the Sprinter in the middle of the field)
The police will not enter a travellers site unless it's a matter of life or death, not because of fear of violence (as was my thought), but because the travellers make formal complaints against individual officers, and under ethnic minority protection / anti-discrimination laws, this brings down a whole well of do-do on the officers concerned, and generates mounds of paperwork.
I was shocked by this in all honesty and felt a fool for playing by the rules. Often I still do.
Cheers
DP
|
did anyone see the episode of police camera action (or whichever one it was) where they chased a stolen car (I think it was a scooby) into a travellers camp? They chased the car in a circuit round the caverans for a few minutes and while the car was out of sight they decamped and disapeared into one of the caravans.
The coppers were only interested in recovering the car and getting out of there as quick as they could. Understandable that the coppers didn't want to hang around (I wouldn't either), but wrong that the travellers get away with it.
|
|
They get away with most things some of its theirs most isn't.
|
Any address will do - the DVLA don't care if you really live there or not. Just give the address of an empty property, then break in and retrieve your mail.
Or you can register a new address as just a caravan and a mailbox. The PO don't care about its legality, if someone lives there, it's an address and they have to deliver to it.
|
|
|
|
The police will not enter a travellers site unless it's a matter of life or death not because of fear of violence (as was my thought) but because the travellers make formal complaints against individual officers and under ethnic minority protection / anti-discrimination laws this brings down a whole well of do-do on the officers concerned and generates mounds of paperwork.
I don't believe this for one moment. Another lame excuse for them not to do anything.
A year or two back some travellers tried to set up camp on a local football ground (in Hinckley, Leics). Naturally the local police looked the other way and did nothing.
Fortunately a local businessman who owns an equipment hire company (and is/was a director of the club) went down there with a few tow trucks and along with his fellow employees he started to pull all the cars/caravans off the site and into the road. The travellers got the message and left. He then shifted a few boulders across the entrance so they couldn't come back in.
I also routinely use a "park and ride" parking site in Leicestershire. Now and again some of the local traveller lads will break into a car or two. The site has CCTV. The normal police response is for 3-4 PC's to turn up a couple of hours later, wander around and look at the broken glass on the ground. I got there one evening and there were about 4 police in high-viz jackets clutching clipboards and waiting for people to return to their broken-into cars and taking 'statements' from them. You really couldn't make it up.
Edited by qxman {p} on 30/01/2008 at 15:08
|
qxman,
When was the last time you wrote to your local police commander to get an informed view on a subject?
Have you requested of your local police a 'ride-along', where you sign a disclaimer and go out on patrol for an evening to see what it is really like?
Have you attended a local Safer Neighbourhoods meeting where you get to meet the local police and discuss local concerns?
Or do you choose a subject matter and presume you know what the real issues are?
To answer the above:
1, the travellers on private property are quite often committing a civil offence only i.e not necessarily a police matter (there are offences if more than 5 caravans and intimidation or vulnerable siteowner etc). If this is not to your liking then a letter to your MP will be needed.
2, Parking sites are always vulnerable to thefts and unless you post a police officer permanently there are often very difficult to combat from a policing perspective. Does the site owner have a security guard, paid for from the cash you pay to park? Has the car park won awards for its security i.e. designed to protect the cars parked there rather than leave the customer to his/her own devices. Some car parks are well secure.
|
WestPig - while the problem of travellers moving onto illegal plots is a civil/planning issue, an immediate visit from the Police and a quick wander past each vehicle used on the road to note they are taxed, and have legal tyres might well be in order.
Talking to my local police contact, the tugs they make when pursuing hare coursers often turn up all kinds of offences including un-paid fines, red diesel in road vehicles, un-roadworthy vehicles, no licences etc. See my post above for an outcome...
|
|
|
"Have you requested of your local police a 'ride-along', where you sign a disclaimer and go out on patrol for an evening to see what it is really like?"
Can I really do this? I'd love to do a ride-along. I thought this was an American thing.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
>>How do travellers register their vehicles with the DVLA?
Some years ago, my sister used to be a 'traveller' (and was for several years).
I asked her this question.
The answer is that most (or all) 'travellers' are not totally separate from the non-travelling community. Travellers do have the use of fixed addresses through their non-travelling relatives & friends.
So, if you are a traveller and require a fixed address at which to register or receive documents etc; simply adjust your travelling plan so that you are in the vicinity of a sympathetic non-travelling relative or friend as & when necessary.
And while yer there: get a bath and wash yer clothes!
|
|
That's certainly my experience as well. And unlike a representative example of non-travellers they always pay up on the nose and usually in cash, which these days is a pain to process.
|
If they do bother, they just use official sites and the mail is retained for them. Fairground showmen do this.
I also remember on Sky3's Roadwars, a car they stopped was registered to a traveller's site.
|
Is there some sort of Daily Mail day release scheme going on in the Back Room today?
|
I'm glad you said that, Nsar, I thought I was being overly sensitive in feeling a bit uneasy reading some comments here, having just returned from a trip to Poland that included a visit to Auschwitz....
Replace "travellers" with some other minority or ethnic group(s), and how long would this thread last??
|
|
Bearing in mind the laws relating to hate speech, I too was surprised to find this thread on here.
|
Bearing in mind the fact that we live in a free country with freedom of speach, I find it very refreshing that we can have this type of discussion without any name calling or accusations. has anyone on this forum made hatefull comments or incited violence? No they havn't, so get a grip :) If they had the mods would soon be on the case.
back to the point, the discussion is about a group of people (travellers) who tend to not have any fixed address and yet own many vehicles. I think it's a fair discussion to have, can't see the problem with it myself. Being from a minority group doesn't excuse anyone from having to abide by the law.
|
|
|
I don't care what 'handle' you give them, but if any group of totally selfish people turn up and live on a piece of open land (usually football pitches round here), until a court order removes them, proceed to dump the contents of their vehicles, be it rubble, garden rubbish, or anything else from their nefarious activities, and then we the taxpayers have to pay to have that mess cleaned up, often, because it's a 'danger to public health' then they get no sympathy from me.
I don't read the Mail, it's far too left wing for me ;>)
|
|
|
|
"Replace "travellers" with some other minority or ethnic group(s), and how long would this thread last??"
What nonsense, being a "traveller" is a lifestyle choice, not something like race, creed, colour or disability. Replace "traveller" with "narrow-boat dweller" and it would be equally inoffensive and equally viable for discussion.
|
In what way is it nonsense? Whether a lifestyle choice or some genetic characteristic present from birth, to judge an entire group on any given criteria like this is patently offensive - and I consider myself far from humourless and PC.
This started out as a fair discussion on how travellers or anyone with a non-permanent address might keep a car legally, but swiftly degenerated into rather ugly (and, frankly, quite predictable given some of the politics inherent on this forum) round of slander and generalisation from people who see lifestyles outwith their normal experience as an object of ridicule, sneering or humour.
I'm not saying there aren't travellers out there driving untaxed, unregistered and uninsured vehicles, but as a percentage of those driving illegally in such a way, I'm sure you'll find that people who live in houses are far greater in number.
I'm sure there are plenty of forums out there for folks to noise off about how "tinkers" took over their local playing fields and the police did nothing about it. Kindly direct all such rants over to them. Is it any wonder travellers view the outside world with such disdain with comments like some of those above....?
|
but swiftly degenerated into....
And therefore - LOCKED.
Besides which, the original question "How do travellers register their vehicles with the DVLA?" has been answered.
DD.
|
|
|
|
|
|
