Insurance aces warn Wigan drivers borrowing cars that they may face a £419 fine as a police crackdown begins
Police are spending this week stopping and seizing uninsured cars, and the drivers most likely to be caught in Wigan are young people who borrowed a car and thought their own policy covered them
Motorists in Wigan who borrow a friend's car are being warned they could face a £419 bill and lose their licence, as police begin Operation Drive Insured, a week-long national crackdown on uninsured driving.
Courts in the Greater Manchester force area, which covers Wigan, convicted 1,851 drivers of driving without insurance last year, down 38.5 per cent on 2024, according to Ministry of Justice records analysed by Temp Insurance UK.
That is 11.1 convictions for every 10,000 vehicles on the area's roads, the 30th highest rate of the 42 police force areas in England and Wales.
Across England and Wales, 76,983 drivers were convicted last year, up seven per cent on 2024 and the second rise in a row, with Cambridgeshire, Gloucestershire and Hampshire each up more than 70 per cent, short-term car insurance site Temp Insurance UK found.
The operation, led by the Motor Insurers' Bureau with police forces across the UK, runs until Sunday November 15. Officers stop suspected uninsured vehicles and can seize them at the roadside. Last year's operation took 4,654 cars off the road.
The Motor Insurers' Bureau said an uninsured vehicle is seized every four minutes in the UK, more than 134,000 so far this year, and listed assuming a policy covers you to drive other vehicles among the seven most common insurance mistakes that leave drivers unknowingly uninsured.
Chris Richards, founder of Temp Insurance UK, said: "Thousands of the drivers in these figures are not criminals. They are young people who borrowed a car, thought their own insurance covered them, and found out at the roadside that it did not.
"Most comprehensive policies no longer let you drive another car. Hardly anyone knows that until they are standing on the hard shoulder watching their mate's car go onto a recovery truck."
Almost one in four of those convicted across England and Wales, 18,726, were aged 18 to 24.
Drivers aged 21 to 24 were convicted at a rate of 42.4 for every 10,000 licence holders, more than three times the rate for drivers in their forties.
Courts fined uninsured drivers an average of £467, and more than one in five was banned from driving.
For anyone who passed their test in the last two years, the punishment is harsher than a fine. The six penalty points that come with the £300 fixed penalty are enough to have a new driver's licence revoked.
They must then pay £34 for a new provisional licence, £23 to retake the theory test and £62 for a weekday practical, a total of £419 before a single lesson. The current wait for a practical test is 11.6 weeks, and the conviction stays on the licence for four years.
The friend who lent the car can be prosecuted too. Letting someone drive your car without insurance is an offence in itself, and police can take the vehicle away on the spot.
Drivers lending or borrowing a car should check the insurance certificate rather than assume. If the borrower is not covered, they can be added as a named driver or take out a short-term policy in their own name, which covers them on that car for anything from an hour to 28 days without touching the owner's policy or no claims bonus.