Vehicle registration and licensing <4)
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by Les Oldridge TEng(CEI), MIMI, AMIFITE SECTION 26(1) of the Vehicle (Excise) Act, 1971, makes it an offence to forge or fraudulently alter or use, or fraudulently lean or allow to be used by any other person any number plate, hackney carriage plate, trade plate or any licence or registration document. The second part of the section makes it an offence when applying! or a licence to make a declaration which is known to be false or in any material respect misleading; or when being required by the Act to furnish particulars relating any vehicle to give particulars known to be false or in any material respect misleading.
These offences carry a maximum fine of £200 on summary conviction and two years jail on indictment. Forgery, of course, is the making of a false document or writing in order that it may be used as genuine. A car thief who erases the writing on a registration book and then inserts other details in order to dispose of a stolen Vehicle would be guilty of this offence as well as others such as stealing the vehicle. The offence may be committed in many other ways, for example, exhibiting a current licence from another vehicle on one on which the licence has expired.
It was held in R v Manners-Asfle)) (1967) 1 W. L. R. 1505 that the word "fraudulently" means "with the intention of avoiding payment of duty" and it is defence to a charge under this section that the vehicle was not "mechanically propelled" within the meaning of the Act (because of its state of disrepair or otherwise) even where a licence from some other vehicle is improperly placed upon it.
In Bloomfield sr, Williams (1970) R. T. R. 184 a defendant signed an application form for an excise licence without reading it and in consequence he failed to observe that his daughter, who had filled the form in, had made a false statement. It was held that the defendant was not guilty of making a declaration which to his knowledge was false. The fact that offences concerning fraudulent use of a licence must occur on public roads was confirmed in Cook v Lan yon (1972) 7 C. L. 461 where it was held that there was no fraudulent use of a licence where the defendant's car was seen on a piece of land not a public road exhibiting an excise licence for another vehicle.
A somewhat lesser offence is created by Regulation 7 of the Road Vehicle (Registration and Licensing) Regulations 1971, which makes it an offence to exhibit anything which is intended to be or could be mistaken for a licence. The same Regulation makes it an offence to alter, deface, mutilatte or add anything to an excise licence or to exhibit a licence which has been tampered with in this way.
New arrangements
From October 11974 new arrangements for issuing a vehicle's registration mark and first licence came into effect.
At present the new system applies only to new and unregistered vehicles. These must be registered at one of the new local Vehicle Licensing Offices of the DoE which are listed in a leaflet (V370) obtainable from post offices. Registration marks will still show the office at which the vehicle was registered. But the Registration Document, the new version of the registration book, will be sent to the owner of the vehicle from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre at Swansea. The Motor Taxation Offices will deal with all the other vehicle excise licence applications for the time being, but eventually all records will be transferred to the new Centre at Swansea.