When is my MOT due (and what happens if you forget)

To find out when your MOT is due, go to gov.uk/check-mot-status and enter your registration number. The service is free, takes about ten seconds, and tells you the exact date the current certificate expires. The same page shows the result of the last test, any advisories that came up, and the mileage at the time.

An MOT is required annually for most cars and motorcycles from their third birthday onwards. It checks roadworthiness: brakes, tyres, lights, emissions, suspension, exhaust, the things that determine whether the car is legally safe to be on the road. A car that fails has to be repaired and retested before it can be driven, with limited exceptions for getting it to and from the garage.

Why nobody reminds you any more

Paper MOT reminders stopped going out in 2012. The agency that runs MOTs offers a free email and text service at gov.uk/mot-reminder, but you have to sign up, and most people haven’t. Signing up takes a minute, the reminders are sent in the run-up to the next test, and there’s no upsell because it’s a government service. Some garages send their own prompts to last year’s customers, though only if you booked with the same one. So the only system tracking your MOT date is you.

Most people find out the morning they go to fill up the car and realise the date passed three days ago.

What happens if you drive past the expiry

There are three risks, depending on how unlucky you are.

The first is insurance. Most car insurance policies require the vehicle to be roadworthy and to have a valid MOT. If you have an accident on an expired certificate, insurers can refuse to pay out for any claim that touches roadworthiness. The case law isn’t as black-and-white as people sometimes say, but the contractual risk is real, and you don’t want to be the one testing it.

The second is the police. ANPR cameras, the ones on motorway gantries and in patrol cars, automatically check tax, insurance, and MOT status against the registration plate. An expired MOT flags the same way an uninsured car does. The old “I’ll do it next week” approach was already weak; it’s significantly weaker now.

The third is the fine. Driving without a valid MOT is an offence with a fine of up to £1,000. If the car is in a dangerous condition you can be hit harder, but £1,000 is the figure to plan around.

There’s also a knock-on with car tax. You can’t renew vehicle tax without a valid MOT. The DVLA checks the database in real time when you try, and the renewal is refused. So a forgotten MOT often arrives wrapped up with a tax problem the same week.

None of this kicks in until the day after expiry. The day of expiry itself, you’re still legal.

You can have it done up to a month early

Booking early doesn’t cost you any time. You can have the MOT done up to a month minus a day before the current certificate expires, and the new certificate runs from the original expiry date rather than the test date. So if your MOT runs out on 14 May, you can test as early as 15 April, and the new one will still run until 14 May the following year.

This is the single most useful thing to know about MOTs. Most people book theirs in the last week before expiry because they assume an early test loses them days. It doesn’t. Book it the moment a reminder lands or a garage flags it. The renewal date stays the same.

What to do if you’ve lost the last certificate

Almost nothing. You don’t need the paper certificate to book the next test, and the garage doesn’t need it either. The full MOT history is on gov.uk/check-mot-status, the same place that tells you when the next one is due. If you ever need a copy of a pass certificate (selling the car, settling an insurance question, ending an argument), you can print it from there.

The paper certificate has been redundant for years. Most people don’t realise.

A small piece of admin that punches above its weight

Knowing when your MOT is due isn’t difficult. A two-minute lookup once a year, free, on a public website. The reason it ends up forgotten is that nothing in your week or your inbox prompts you, and the consequence sits dormant until exactly the wrong moment.

This is the kind of thing we built Oosby for. Type the registration once and we pull the MOT date along with the rest of the car’s details, then nudge you in the weeks before the renewal. The date stops being yours to remember.

In the meantime: gov.uk/check-mot-status. Type in the registration. Write the date on the calendar.