634,000 unlicensed vehicles on UK’s roads in 2019

The Department for Transport has released the latest Vehicle Excise Duty (VED) evasion statistics, showing that an estimated 634,000 vehicles  are being driven unlicensed on the UK’s roads.

The 634,000 figure represents that 1.6% of vehicles in UK traffic – or active stock – are unlicensed in 2019 , a reduction from the 1.8% (755,000) in 2017, but a similar percentage to the 1.5% in 2015.

The recent trends are likely to be related to the major changes to the vehicle licensing system that took place in October 2014 when the paper tax disc was scrapped.  At the same time as the need to display a disc in the windscreen was abolished a change was made so that any remaining tax was not transferred to the new owner of the vehicle.

The current levels of VED evasion results in the Treasury losing out on approximately £94 million this year, although this is the upper estimate.