Police forces throughout Britain commenced "Operation Andover," aimed at ridding the roads of foreign-registered vehicles, which were being driven in the U.K.

1st January 2009, Police forces throughout Britain commenced "Operation Andover,"  aimed at ridding the roads of foreign-registered vehicles, which were being driven in the U.K. for months or even years without having been taxed or MOTed. ( Northampton is full of them - mainly from Poland.)

We were given the DVLA directive, on which impounding was based ( press release 24/2006 ) which states that "Vehicles that are properly registered and taxed in their home countries and brought into the U.K. temporarily are usually exempt from U.K. registration in the U.K. for up to six months in any twelve month period."

Any sane person would assume that this would be a cumulative process, so someone visiting the U.K. in their vehicle from 1st January 2009 to 10th January 2009 and then from 1st July to 10th July 2009 would have been in the U.K. for a total of twenty days.

Not so.

The Police's interpretation of the Directive is that the Six Month Period commences on 1st January 2009 and ends on 30th June 2009, even if the vehicle had left the U.K. within days of arriving.

This means that  "ex-pats", like us, visiting their family in Britain in a foreign vehicle for a few days in January and then for a few days in July are liable to have their car impounded for having exceeded the six months period.

This was the basis for impounding our car, which visited the U.K. from 19th June to 8th July 2008 ( 20 days ) and entered again on February 9th 2009.

So it had been in the U.K. for a total for 67 days.