What was claimed
A police car pictured has an expired MOT.
Our verdict
The vehicle in question did, but it doesn’t matter, as police vehicles are exempt.
Police cars don’t need MOT registration
29 April 2021
A widely-shared Facebook post questions why a police car does not appear to have an up-to-date MOT registration.
It is true that the pictured police car’s MOT has expired (you can check this here), but as we have reported before police vehicles are exempt from MOT certification.
MOT tests are enforced under the Road Traffic Act 1988, but some categories of vehicles, including police cars, do not have to be registered through MOT certification. The Motor Vehicles (Tests) Regulations 1981 states all of the exemptions including police vehicles.
This article is part of our work fact checking potentially false pictures, videos and stories on Facebook. You can read more about this—and find out how to report Facebook content—here. For the purposes of that scheme, we’ve rated this claim as missing context because police cars don’t need up-to-date MOT registrations.