Breaking Cars

[Elton]

If I wanted to buy a few cars, break them for parts and sell those parts commercially, would I need a licence to do so these days?

[chesters1]

getting the right cars is the first step ,not many lexus found for £50 round here

[Elton]

getting the right cars is the first step ,not many lexus found for £50 round here

 

Funny you should mention the Lexus. That was what got me and a friend talking about it. He's a mechanic and is just about to put a 4-litre Lexus V8 engine into his Mitsubishi FTO. The engine was very cheap.

[peter mccue]

If I wanted to buy a few cars, break them for parts and sell those parts commercially, would I need a licence to do so these days?

 

Pretty sure you would Elton, you would certainly need an environmental license for the removal, storage & disposal of the vehicles bodily fluids.

 

Can't pour it down the drains now you know

[Brian Carragher]

If I wanted to buy a few cars, break them for parts and sell those parts commercially, would I need a licence to do so these days?

 

Yes as Peter has said you will need an EA licence and planning permission (and all that goes with it) from your local authority

[Elton]

But at what stage would you need those? If you were selling the 'remains' to a licenced scrap dealer, would you still need a licence? And what licence is it that you need?

[Brian Carragher]

If you're going to do it commercially then you have to have the neccesary permissions in place before you start breaking and selling

 

The EA will issue a licence to break and controll the waste (control of pollution regs I think) and the local council in consultation with the EA will impose the conditions that they will allow you to operate in, that will cover things like combustable storage, controls on spills, bund wall storage areas,recording of parts and vin numbers and they will insist that you have a waste disposal and waste transfer licence from the EA before they grant approval, the council may even want to have a site visit before granting any approval especially if they recieve any objections after they advertise your planning application

 

If all that sounds like hurdles and fences , then thats just what they are, designed to put you off, good luck if you go for it as different authorities put different emphasis on different parts of the regs so whats hot in one council area may be lower down the scale at another but the one common factor is the EA, get them on side and its a lot easier to get your operating licence

[Guest Brumagem Phil]

You'll also need to show evidence of all your licenses etc before the big salvage auctions like universal salvage (they are owned by copart now i think) will allow you to even bid for break only salvage.

 

All the red tape is part of the reason I packed it up.

[Elton]

Did you used to do it on a very large scale, Phil? I wasn't even aware that you had to have a licence just to buy certain cars until I saw an Ebay listing for a car that had been classified by the DVLA as unfir for the road.

[Steve Walker]

I know of a bloke in Bangor who buys old smokers, drives around in them for a while and then dismantles them and sells the bits on eBay when they die. I should think that the limiting factor to doing it on a very small scale would be complaints from neighbours.