Check past MOTs online

[unknownmale]

Don't know if anyone else has seen this, You can now check the cars past MOTs, see advisories...Great if you don't have the history.

https://www.gov.uk/check-mot-history-vehicle

[mr.brown]

I've been trying that for the past couple of weeks - keeps saying "unavailable"

[james butler]

ive used this a few times aswell.
great tool when buying a used car that has "never had an advisory".
mr brown you have to use the most up to date valid mot cert number to make it work as an old one does bring up unavailable for some reason.

[unknownmale]

I've been trying that for the past couple of weeks - keeps saying "unavailable"

Seems a bit unreliable at the moment. But I managed to use it a few times, found out a lot about the car too!

[mr.brown]

@james - the entire service is coming up unavailable

[unknownmale]

Yeah, it doesn't seem to be working at the moment. Was alright Thursday. The check car tax thing was like that for the first few months too from memory

[eefy]

thanks for the link, I got my BMW last year but didn't know when the MOT was due, certain the dealer gave me the certificate lol worked a treat though :)

[stormin]

The web address has changed for this service but they don't seem to have advertised it very well. As posted they don't even seem to tell you on the old address! Try

https://mot-history.net/

Its now even better than before as you don't need any certificate numbers so you can just check the history of any car! Happy days!

[the edmundator]

It isn't clever enough to link together records for cars whose number plates have been changed, unfortunately (if you know the different registrations then you can still search for both).

[james butler]

It isn't clever enough to link together records for cars whose number plates have been changed, unfortunately (if you know the different registrations then you can still search for both).

if i was a prospective buyer of a car i know nothing about, i would be put off a car whos plates have been changed.
this would show up as a lack of history on the database as you rightly pointed out.
when i put my datsun reg in i only get the last 2 mots because they are the only mots its had in the last 25 years
so maybe theres a good reason for lack of mot history
or
its a knacker and the owners hiding it

[the edmundator]

Plenty of people have private plates, which is a perfectly sound reason for changing them when the owner changes. I'm not sure how the system copes once the same number plate has been assigned to several different cars.

[the edmundator]

Actually, it seems hit-and-miss.

Both our modern cars have private plates. For my wife's car, the search only finds the most recent MoT results when the car had the private plate - you have to use the original plate to find the old data.

With my car, the private plate brings up all the MoT history from new.

Perversely, my wife's car has had the private plate longer than mine.

[james butler]

. I'm not sure how the system copes once the same number plate has been assigned to several different cars.

That's a good point because like you say if the plate has been used on many different cars then the history would look odd as it would have the history of all the cars the plate was transferred to.
I suppose though it would only give you relevant up to date info and not any cars it was previously assigned to.
Some private plates have been origenal plates for an old cars that has been scrapped so the plate becomes available to buy. Therefore it wouldn't make sense to transfer mot data each time the plate is transferred.
More likely than not though some plates are so old the mot data is pre 2001 so not recorded.