DfT highlight change in vehicle type approval standards from 1st January 2023 that may impact the specifications which licensing authorities publish for vehicles to be used for taxis and private hire vehicles and other purposes.

In its communication to licensing authorities, the DfT wrote:

The current acceptable options for vehicle registration in Great Britain include EU type approval and two forms of type approval that have been introduced since Brexit: UK(NI) type approval and GB type approval, which were introduced on 1 January 2023. EU type approvals are currently accepted in GB via a Provisional GB approval scheme, but a vehicle with Provisional approval is outwardly identical to one with EU type approval.

Whole vehicle type approval to EU, GB or UK(NI) are all acceptable in terms of registration in Great Britain at this time.  Within Northern Ireland only EU and UK(NI) are acceptable. 

There is also Individual Vehicle Approval (IVA) typically used for more specialised vehicles or one-off imports. Vehicles imported when they are more than 10 years are not subject to IVA, and only require MOT prior to registration, but DVSA offer a non-statutory IVA (known as Voluntary IVA or VIVA) service where required, to verify that a vehicle over 10 years old meets the IVA rules.

For an overview on type approval see Vehicle approval: Overview - GOV.UK (www.gov.uk). For more detailed information please refer to the website of the Vehicle Certification Agency and the Type Approval and What is Type Approval? pages in particular.