THE
VEHICLE IDENTITY CHECK (VIC) SCHEME
The VIC scheme was scrapped in October 2015.
VIC SCHEME - BACKGROUND
The VIC scheme was introduced by
Government in 2003 following prolonged problems with car crime in the UK during
the 1990s. It was aimed at the salvage
deemed to be at greatest risk of being involved in ‘ringing’ – category C. Legislation required insurers to destroy the
V5 registration document and a new V5 would only be issued by DVLA once the
salvage had undergone a physical inspection, to check the identity of the
vehicle, at a Government premises. Until
a VIC was performed, the vehicle couldn’t be taxed or used on the road.
There were only about 50 VIC test centres in the UK, meaning that often considerable travel &
inconvenience was required. The cost of the VIC was £41. However, once a
VIC was passed, a new V5 registration document was supplied FOC , upon
application, by DVLA. The new V5
carried a warning stating that the vehicle had been ‘substantially accident
damaged’
VIC was never intended to check
the ‘quality of repair’ and in most cases no examination of the repair was
undertaken, meaning that it was effectively useless in combating ‘cut &
shuts’ and poor repairs.
Implementation of VIC is thought
to have had a huge negative impact on category C salvage – on average adding
£200 to the cost of repair - effectively reducing its value, encouraging export
overseas (where there is no VIC requirement), facilitating illegal dismantling &
undermining the insurance industries own UK salvage agents. As a result, the number of VICs undertaken by
Government was much lower than expected, and the whereabouts of about 1 million
of category C vehicles remains unknown.
Over the same period, VIC only detected about 30 ‘ringers’, at an
estimated cost of about £4million/ vehicle.
All the evidence suggested that VIC was neither cost-effective nor combating
vehicle crime. At the same there was
growing concern about a number of other problems with motor salvage, some also relating
to wider non-salvage ‘vehicle crime’.
As a result, following consultation,
in June 2014 Government announced that the VIC scheme was to be abolished in
October 2015. In the meantime,
Government would examine some of the most important problems highlighted by a
wide range of interested parties, and consider what, if any, action should be
taken. This process, involving insurers,
body repairers, vehicle dismantlers and salvage agents, vehicle manufacturers,
Police and several Government Departments, started in July 2014.