COVID-19 - MOT Exemption

Due to the COVID-19 virus, the UK Government have made the decision that any light vehicles (cars, motorcycles, light vans) that required an MOT between the 30th March and the 31st July, will have the MOT due date extended by 6 months as long as they are in a roadworthy condition. If it was due before 30th March or after 31st July you can book an MOT as normal.

For Commercial vehicles, the exemption period is 3, 6 or 12 months from 21st March 2020. If your vehicle or trailer is over 2 years old then it should get a 3 month extension on the MOT expiry date. If the MOT was due to expire in March or April it will be extended by 6 months. If the vehicle or trailer is between 1 and 2 years old, you'll get a 12 month extension.

More details below about this MOT exemption including a link to the UK Government website are at the bottom of this page, or you can search on the Internet for COVID-19 MOT Extension.

The GDS system has a new form added to allow you to update the MOT Expiry date of vehicles as required.  As a garage owner, you may decide that you wish to send out MOT Reminders as usual on the schedule that was in place in February and continue to invite customers for an MOT Test as normal, or you may wish to move your reminder dates on and not plan to carry out any MOT tests until later in the year.

This can be accessed from the newly added Update Reminder Dates toolbar button when on the Vehicle List screen. You need to have Manager permissions to access this feature.

Before running this feature, you may want to choose the Export to Excel option to export the list of vehicles and reminders dates to a spreadsheet format or CSV file. You could then run this after to compare the changes for your records if you wanted to.  Any changes made to the records are recorded on the Notes tab of the Vehicle. There is also a new column appended on the Vehicles List screen that displays the status of the COVID-19 MOT Exemption. You can use this to filter and search on your records if required in the future. 

You can roll back your own changes if you make any mistakes by clicking the button to Enable all dropdown list options (at the bottom left of the form) and you can then set the Update Action to Remove in order to remove the time period added and revert your data back to how it was.

There is also an option to Rollback previous updates by clicking the Rollback Previous button at the bottom of the form. It will take you to a different tab, where you can change individual updates you have made and not revert everything back that has been done.

Screenshot below showing the Vehicle List screen and the Update Reminder Dates toolbar button (circled red).

Screenshot below showing the Update Reminder Dates screen with the default options set to add 6 months to the Next MOT Due date.  Once the settings are filled in then click Process the Update to update your vehicle records.

From the UK Government website - How the extension works

For light vehicles and cars: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/vehicle-owners-to-be-granted-mot-exemption-in-battle-against-coronavirus

For commercial vehicles and trailers: https://www.gov.uk/mot-for-hgv-buses-and-trailers

A vehicle’s MOT expiry date will be automatically extended by the relevant period if it’s eligible. This will be done just before it’s due to expire.

This means that:

• the vehicle will still have a valid MOT certificate for the exemption period

• the vehicle can still taxed

• the insurance will still be valid

• the vehicle’s record will be updated so the police can see you have a valid MOT

The vehicle must be kept safe to drive.