Useful advice

Now Barry Biker’s pet hate is paying extortionate insurance premiums. And Barry’s premiums are higher than most, because a) he lives in central London and b) he got done for drink–driving in 1998. Now Barry’s not one to make excuses, but he was nicked riding home on a CG125 the morning after a party when he was a student. When the breath test was borderline, he was bloodtested — came in at 81mg/100mls. The limit is 80mg/100mls. So, a fair cop, but 10 more minutes and he’d have been alright. And when he told me about it, I told him that I suspect most people have been a bit dodgy the next day and not even thought about it. Of course, it’s a DR10 as far as the insurance companies are concerned and no–one’s ever interested in the background, whether he was five times over the limit on an R1 and was founded doing a wheelie through a kindergarten playground, whatever…

So Barry goes to Court, tells the magistrate how ashamed he is, serves his year’s ban and resigns himself to paying excessive insurance premiums, being refused car–hire and being generally stigmatised by society for five years until his conviction is spent under the Rehabilitation of Offenders Act 1974 and comes off his licence.

WRONG. The conviction’s spent after 5 years for the purposes of the criminal law, but for the purposes of the DVLA it remains on your licence for 11 years and many insurance companies will still ask about it when you apply for insurance and will in any case see it when you send your licence in. Six more years. Bogus.

Now this is wrong, I thought. These insurance companies make enough money as it is and Barry’s not a bad bloke and pretty careful on his bike. So I did a little research and was interested to find something that appeared on the Financial Ombudsman’s site in February 2003.

It appears that in the view of the Financial Ombusdman, if an insurance company refuses insurance or gives less favourable terms and conditions than to other policyholders, simply because of a spent conviction, this will be a breach of statutory duty (imposed by the ROA 1974) by the insurance company — from the FOS site:

“If firms insist on asking questions about spent convictions, then they must effectively ignore the answers they receive. Otherwise, we are likely to consider they have breached their statutory duty.

Similarly, if a firm cancels the policy of a customer who has a spent conviction (but whose licence is still endorsed), simply because the customer did not disclose the endorsement, then we will uphold the customer’s complaint”. Excellent.

So, once a conviction’s spent, you don’t tell anyone about it and see what quote you get (and get it in writing) and if they try to change the quote once they find out about it, you complain to the FOS. I’m sure all this will be of no interest to you law–abiding lot, but thought I’d mention it, just in case… Here’s the full article