I'm coming up to the end of my ban in a month or so, but the driving ban is truly the least of my worries.
There seems to be so many complications with a criminal record that it seems so difficult to stomach:
- Insurance premiums
- Home insurance
- Possible property rental issues (criminal record could potentially invalidate landlords home insurance)
- Possible issues with obtaining a mortgage
- Employment
- Travel Issues (work visa; cannot enter Canada for 10/11yrs)
Overall, there's a light at the end of the tunnel with the rehabilitation act in place after 5 years; but it seems so dark at the moment.
Hi SillySausage,
I’m a bit further down the road, so to speak - I can stop disclosing my conviction to my insurance company in July this year and finally move on with my life.
In answer to your points, these are from my direct experiences mid ban, immediately after my ban ended and subsequently since having my license back for a year and a bit:
- Insurance premiums: obviously this is going to be a bit of a shock, depending on what sort of car you choose to insure after you have your license returned. I opted to use my old car which is a fairly insignificant 1.2 so insurance wasn’t actually that scary (about £700-800 all in). Anything above a 1.6 though is going to be tough, at least until you get a year NCB under your belt. Almost 2 years down the line and my renewal price is about £150-200.
- Home insurance: never had an issue with it, both while disqualified and after getting my license back. The company I’m with (and have been for years) is pretty reasonable and doesn’t even ask about motoring related convictions.
- Property rental issues: rented for a year while I was banned and I needed somewhere at short notice to live. My landlord was great, a really nice guy, and although he did ask if I had any criminal convictions, and I had to tell him at this point, he essentially said, pretty much to the word “as long as you’re not a murderer, fiddle kids or your taxes I don’t want to know”. I guess it all depends on who your landlord / agency is and what their individual policies on criminal convictions are; most don’t mind about motoring related convictions but you get the odd jobsworth.
- Possible issues with obtaining a mortgage: I now own my own place with my partner and when filling in the mortgage application, there was no mention of anything to do with motoring related offences, only financial related things, like “have you ever robbed a bank / plan to rob a bank?”.
- Enployment: I’m in a relatively small, highly skilled and technical industry and I’d recently completed a degree, so I count myself fairly lucky that I walked into a job not soon after I’d finished studying. I can imagine in bigger sectors or the public sector especially in sensitive careers, you may struggle.
- Travel issues: I realise that Canada is essentially a no go for another 5 and a bit years, but as my partner keeps telling me (who really wants to go) “it isn’t exactly going anywhere is it?”. I regularly work abroad and haven’t had any problems with being refused entry. I recently went skiing in Japan and had no such trouble (I didn’t put down anything on the form though so I took a gamble, albeit extremely stupid). The only problem I will potentially have in the future is getting my C1/D and B1/B2 US visas renewed (can’t remember whether it’s 5 or 11 years for not declaring convictions).
It does seem like doom and gloom at the very end of your ban and that time slows right down and months seem like years, but there’s lots of things you can do to give yourself something to aim for such as shopping around for insurance quotes and getting a list of the cheapest companies, thus making your waiting time to getting back on the road a bit quicker. The best thing I can say to you having been in your position is that you’ve done the hard bits, ie, the court hearing, losing your license and then the first half of your ban.
MM