Changing tax class to historic.

Try a different Post Office - mine converted my car to historic just on presentation of the V5 as soon as it was eligible. They also posted the V5 off for the tax class change, and gave me twelve months free VED, all in about a minute.

I have heard that some Post Office staff insist that it cannot be done by them, but it can. Maybe I was lucky because mine had just been refurbished and perhaps the staff had been on training while it was shut. Or maybe they're just generally on the ball.

More than half.

If the car is taxed already this happens automatically and you don't need to go to the post office. You get a rebate for any pre-paid road tax (eventually) via BACS and if you are paying on monthley DD you can just stop the payments.

Remember that the car becomes Historic the April(?) after it turns 40, not on its 40th birthday, although it becomes MOT exempt on its birthday. Consistant? Whats that mean? So effectively many cars can be pretty much 41 before they get historic class.

If the car was SORN you should have got a replacement "Historic" V5C automatically.

If the car has been off the road and not SORN then the post office have always been able to sort that out for you. They may not know, but they can. The little old lady in my local PO told me "same process as a disabled class change".

All of this hinges on the DVLA computer doing what it is supposed to, which its not a guarantee, and then if it goes awry you are sadly often screwed because the DVLA is a nightmare when things come off the rails.

Any and all of the above may have changed in the last 5 minutes let alone 5 months but thats how it has "always" worked - at least in the current itteration of the regs

If the car has been off the road and not SORN then the post office have always been able to sort that out for you. They may not know, but they can. The little old lady in my local PO told me "same process as a disabled class change".



This is the issue we had .

I really need to find another post office , but all the old school helpful ones seem to be shut down .

I'm 97.25% sure that when I got my Daimler it had been off the road f'in ages and it was still PLG and I just had the old style log book - not even a V5C - the one before that - and all I did was pretended I was the ghost of the previous owner and "I have sold my car" online and got the new V5C that way and it came as historic. So maybe getting a new V5C through one of the simple online methods is the easy way to fix this. Change of address, change of keeper, change of name, etc. all of which are free V5C issue

Did my tr7 a year ago at the post office with no problems, it was taxed at the time. It has to be one of the main post offices that offers taxing of vehicles etc.( I did it in the one on Chelmsford High street)

Yep, did mine a few months ago - filled it in, filled the form, took it in , lady in office stamped a few things, placed it in a sack behind the counter, gave me a receipt and a couple weeks later I had a new "historic" V5.

what they couldn't do was send off my form for a replacement V5 for something else - I had to send it off myself. Even allowing for the fact I forgot to enclose the cheque for 25 quid, so DVLA returned it asking for one, that still only took a few weeks.

This might be complicated somewhat by the fact that post offices are independent businesses licensed by Royal Mail. I don't know the ins and outs, but I bet there's different levels of licensing meaning some post offices are commissioned to do some stuff and not others. Unless it's like GPs where even if they are commissioned to do stuff it's pot luck (or, rather, down to the agreeableness of any given practise) as to whether they do it or not.

Course, it'd be helpful if they produced a list of post offices that are commissioned to do certain things. Perhaps there is one floating around somewhere...

Quick update as I managed to get it sorted today. I'd not had time to call DVLA or try another place until this afternoon.

Popped along to another Post Office and the lady behind the counter took one look at the V5 and went, "We don't do these often, I'm not sure what to do". Then wrote 'historic in the box on the V5, read some stuff on her screen, scanned the code on the V5 and handed me a receipt.

It was so quick and painless that I even managed to get my hair cut and back to work - all within the hour.