Certificate of Destruction

The ATF will give you a Certificate of Destruction, under UK regulations they cannot charge you for this Certificate of Destruction. but the ATF may charge you for scrapping the vehicle.

The details that appear on the Certificate of Destruction include; details of the ATF and the Environment Agency, Licensing Authority that issued the ATF licence, details of the vehicle, your name, address, nationality & signature.

The ATF should give you the Certificate of Destruction immediately and tell the DVLA that you are no longer responsible for the vehicle. If this is not possible, the ATF will tell you that you can collect it later, or they will post it to you. If you do not get a Certificate of Destruction immediately you should fill in the ‘Selling or transferring your vehicle to a motor trader, insurer or dismantler’ (V5C/3) section of your V5C and send it to DVLA to tell us you no longer have the vehicle, you should then receive a letter confirming that you are no longer responsible for the vehicle.

You should keep the certificate as it is proof that you are no longer responsible for the vehicle. If you lose your Certificate of Destruction you cannot get another copy, instead you can get a letter confirming that a Certificate of Destruction has been issued for your vehicle by filling in a ‘Request by an individual for information about a vehicle’ (V888) form on the website direct.gov.uk/motoringforms

The ATF may not destroy the vehicle immediately, but should do so as soon as possible, once the certificate has been issued you are not responsible for the vehicle even if it has not been destroyed.