What was claimed
This police car’s MOT certificate is overdue.
Our verdict
That’s what the government’s checking service says. It also says that police cars are exempt from the MOT.
Police cars are exempt from having an MOT
A widely shared Facebook post contains a screenshot showing that a police car’s MOT certificate is “overdue”.
This is an accurate reflection of what you’ll see, at the time of writing, if you search for the car’s registration number on the government’s MOT checking service.
It does not mean that the car is in breach of the rules, however, because police vehicles are exempt from MOT.
The screenshot contains a note saying “This vehicle may be MOT exempt” with a link to MOT exemption guidance. This guidance gives a list of exempt vehicle categories, which includes a “vehicle provided for police purposes and maintained in an approved workshop”.
Join 72,953 people who trust us to check the facts
Sign up to get weekly updates on politics, immigration, health and more.
Subscribe to weekly email newsletters from Full Fact for updates on politics, immigration, health and more. Our fact checks are free to read but not to produce, so you will also get occasional emails about fundraising and other ways you can help. You can unsubscribe at any time. For more information about how we use your data see our Privacy Policy.
We have written about similar posts twice before.
Photo by Ashley Harkness on Unsplash
We deserve better than bad information.
After we published this fact check, we contacted the DVSA to suggest they make it clearer on their website that police vehicles are exempt from MOT.
The DVSA did not send us a substantive response.
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 MOT certificates.