A load of scrap

by Simon Handby in Your car on 02.05.08

If you’ve ever been for a bracing countryside walk only to be brought up short by the sight of an abandoned vehicle, you’ll know how important it is for cars to be properly scrapped and recycled. In fact, seven years ago the government was so concerned about an estimated 340,000 illegally dumped cars each year, that it planned a new law to do something about it.

Brought in five years ago, the End of Life Vehicle Regulation (ELV) was meant to bring a halt to illegal dumping in the UK, but as Jay Nagley writes on cleangreencars, it hasn’t quite worked out like that. In fact, thanks to a loophole in the vehicle registration system, car owners can still scrap their car by just checking a box on its V5 registration document.

With no need for a Certificate of Destruction (CoD) to show that a car has been scrapped – a vital part of the new system – hundreds of thousands of cars are effectively going missing, Nagley writes.

According to BERR records, around 685,000 Certificates of Destruction (CoDs) were issued in 2006, the first year in which data was collected. A further 215,000 Notices of Destruction (NODs) were sent to DVLA, meaning 900,000 cars were treated under the new rules.

That means up to 1.1 million cars have vanished from the radar. No one knows how many of these have been dumped complete with tyres, oils and with un-deployed airbags intact.

And the problem may be set to get worse, if a recent road tax change has the results that industry experts fear. According to The Times, a change in the road fund license regulations for cars registered between March 2001 and March 2006 will add hundreds of pounds to the cost of taxing them, devaluing middle-aged family cars.

Industry analysts CAP said that the changes would reduce many larger cars to their scrap value. If that results in thousands more ‘missing’ cars, we hope they aren’t coming to a country lane near us.

IMAGE by Flickr user pualv