The UK Department for Transport (DfT) has published plans to scrap the MOT requirement for almost all motor vehicles over 40 years old. The new rule will kick-in on 20 May, 2018, and will be a rolling rule—meaning vehicles built before 1978 will be exempt, but come 2019, that will switch to vehicles built before 1979. And so on.
Additionally, by May next year the road fund licence (road tax) will become duty free for forty-somethings. And that will also be rolling.
It’s reckoned that 197,000 vehicles on UK roads are currently MOT exempt. By 20 May, 2018, that will increase to an estimated 293,000. We don’t know whose figures these are, incidentally (presumably the DfT’s). Vehicles which have been substantially modified will still require an MOT test after May next year—but it’s not clear if that will now include pre-1960 vehicles, all of which are currently MOT exempt. And it’s not clear what “substantially modified” really means.