United Kingdom Private Sale or Transfer of a Vehicle (Change of Registered Keeper, V5C)

This file is the source-review record for this document version, per the manual-source-review-v1 practice. It documents the provenance of the published fields and flow and states the current verification claim honestly.

Current claim

• status: draft
• verification.method: manual-source-review-v1
• verification.lastVerifiedAt: 2026-07-02

The document was derived from and cross-checked against the official sources below, but the full field-by-field comparison the practice requires (manual-source-review-v1 → Procedure step 2) has not yet been completed and recorded against every screen of the live online service — only its first, unauthenticated screen was directly observed (see "What was directly observed vs. inferred" below). It therefore remains draft, not verified.

Sources examined

• Document (id, version): gb/dvla/vehicle-keeper-change-v5c / 1.0.0
• Spec version: GovSchema 0.3.0
• Authority: Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).
• Primary source URL: https://www.gov.uk/sold-bought-vehicle — the GOV.UK smart-answer wizard "Tell DVLA you've sold, transferred or bought a vehicle". Fetched live (curl, raw HTML, HTTP 200, no block), 2026-07-02. Every branch of the wizard was walked by resubmitting its GET-based response parameter:
  • Step 1, "Are you a motor trader?" → yes / no
  • Step 2 (trader path), "Have you bought or sold a vehicle?" (not pursued further — out of scope; motor-trade transactions use a different DVLA service, see below)
  • Step 2 (non-trader path), "What have you done with your vehicle?" → sold-it / put-it-into-someone-else-s-name... / scrapped-it-or-it-s-been- written-off / bought-it
  • Step 3 (sold-it path), "Did you sell the vehicle privately, or to a motor trader?" → sold-it-privately-to-a-person-or-business / sold-it-to-a-motor-trader
  • Each terminal page's guidance prose and its outbound link to the relevant DVLA digital service were captured directly.
• Online service (private/gift path, modelled here): https://change-private-vehicle-sale.service.gov.uk/ — "Private sale of a vehicle (Keeper to keeper)", a DVLA Beta digital service. Linked from both the "Sold your vehicle to a private individual or business" and "Put your vehicle into someone else's name" terminal pages of the wizard above (same URL for both). Fetched live, 2026-07-02:
  • The unauthenticated start page ("Details of the vehicle being sold") was read directly as raw HTML, capturing the exact <input> name/id attributes, maxLength, and client-side input masks (alphanumericOnly, numericOnly) for vehicleRegistrationNumber and v5cDocumentReferenceNumber.
  • A POST with a fabricated registration number (AB12CDE) and V5C reference number (12345678901) was submitted (session cookie + CSRF authenticity_token captured and replayed correctly) to exercise the service end to end, per this cycle's "complete a test run with valid example mock data" instruction. The service correctly redirected to /change-keeper/dropout/unable-to-find-vehicle, whose page text confirms it validates the pair against DVLA's live vehicle record — there is no public test/sandbox mode, and this schema does not attempt to guess or brute-force a real UK vehicle's registration/V5C pair to progress further (that would mean probing a live government record-matching system with invented identifiers, which this review treats as out of scope for a reference-schema authoring pass regardless of technical feasibility).
  • /accessibility?locale=en was also fetched to confirm the service's own name ("Private sale of a vehicle (Keeper to keeper)") and Beta status.
• Related, out-of-scope DVLA digital service identified during discovery: https://transfer-vehicle-to-trade.service.gov.uk/seller — linked from both the "sold it to a motor trader" and "scrapped it or it's been written off" terminal pages of the wizard. Not fetched beyond confirming the URL; a genuinely different DVLA service with its own field set, and a natural candidate for a future, separate schema (see "Scope" below).
• Official form id: V5C (the vehicle log book itself; also referenced as V5C/2 "new keeper supplement" and V5C/3 "notification of sale or transfer of a motor vehicle" in DVLA's paper process, per the wizard's guidance text, but neither sub-form was independently opened or extracted this cycle — the wizard's prose was the source for what each contains).
• Retrieved / reviewed: 2026-07-02 (all sources confirmed live at authoring time).
• Reviewer: GovSchema Engineering (Standards Engineer — initial authoring source review).

What was directly observed vs. inferred

| Field | Basis | |---|---| | soldToMotorTraderOrGarage | Directly quoted warning banner on the online service's own start screen. | | buyerRegisteringVehicleAbroad | Directly quoted from the "sold privately" terminal guidance page. | | vehicleRegistrationNumber, v5cDocumentReferenceNumber | Directly observed: exact <input> name, id, maxLength, and input-mask class from the live, unauthenticated start screen's HTML. | | transactionType | Directly inferred from the wizard's own routing: both "sold it" (privately) and "put it into someone else's name" terminal pages link to the same online service URL, and the "transfer" page explicitly instructs treating a gift the same as a sale for this purpose. | | newKeeperFullName | Directly quoted instruction ("Use the new keeper's name as the person you've 'sold' the vehicle to..."). | | newKeeperAddressLine1 / newKeeperAddressTown / newKeeperPostcode | Inferred, not directly observed as a screen field. The vehicle-lookup step is the only screen of the online service this review could reach (see above); everything past it — including whether the new keeper's address is collected as three separate fields, a single free-text block, or a postcode-lookup widget — is reconstructed from the stated outcome ("a new log book within 5 to 7 working days" is sent to the new keeper, which requires DVLA to hold an address for them). This is the schema's weakest sourcing point and the first thing a future revision should firm up once the online service can be exercised past vehicle look-up (e.g. with an authorised test vehicle, if DVLA ever publishes one, or via direct confirmation from DVLA). | | sellerEmailAddress, newKeeperEmailAddress | Directly quoted ("an email confirmation (if you gave your email address)" / "(if you gave their email address)"). |

Scope and jurisdiction notes

• Whole of the United Kingdom. DVLA's vehicle registration function is UK-wide; jurisdiction.country is GB per registry convention for gb/dvla/* sibling entries (matching gb/dvla/vehicle-tax).
• Seller-initiated only. This schema models the person giving up the vehicle notifying DVLA — not the buyer's own registration steps (which use the green "new keeper slip" and, if the seller never tells DVLA online, a posted V5C with section 2 or 6 completed instead).
• Motor-trade and scrappage transactions are out of scope for v1.0.0. DVLA runs a distinct digital service for those, transfer-vehicle-to-trade.service.gov.uk, with its own start page and (very likely) its own field set — not confirmed in this pass. This is a strong candidate for a follow-up schema (e.g. gb/dvla/vehicle-trade-transfer) once that service is examined the same way this one was.
• The postal, no-log-book fallback is out of scope. When a seller has no V5C to reference, the guidance directs them to write to DVLA (Swansea) with their own name/address, the registration number, the make and model, the exact date of sale, and the new keeper's name/address. Because that fallback exists specifically for sellers who cannot supply the V5C reference number the online service requires, its field list is a different (postal) channel, not a description of what the online service asks for, and is not folded into this schema's field set.
• Vehicle tax is out of scope. The wizard states tax is not transferred and must be handled separately (see the already-published gb/dvla/vehicle-tax).
• Retaining the registration number (a private-plate retention) is mentioned as something the seller must do before using this service, if wanted — a separate, prerequisite DVLA process, not modelled as a field here.
• Buyer-side ("bought it") flow is out of scope. The wizard's "bought a vehicle" terminal page describes the buyer filling in log-book section 2 or 6 themselves and posting it, or relying on the seller's online notification — a distinct, buyer-initiated action this schema does not model.
• Conditional requiredness (the two eligibility exits) is expressed structurally via steps[].transitions (GSP-0013/§7.2), matching the pattern used in us/ca/dmv/real-id-application.

Path to a verified claim (next step)

To advance to status: verified, a reviewer applies manual-source-review-v1 (Procedure step 2) field-by-field against the live change-private-vehicle-sale.service.gov.uk flow using a genuine, authorised UK vehicle and V5C reference number (the one blocker this cycle could not clear), confirms or corrects the inferred new-keeper-address fields, resolves any discrepancy by shipping a new schema version (immutability — VERSIONING §3, practice Procedure step 5), and records the outcome here plus sets status: verified with a current verification.lastVerifiedAt/ nextReviewBy.

Re-verification

Per the practice's Cadence, nextReviewBy is set to 2027-01-01 (6 months). Re-check the source on or before that date and on any source.url change.