Your car and driving licence in England: driving on the left, NOVA, and the sums to do first

First the reassuring part, then the sums.

Your driving licence: no hurry, but an opportunity

On your Dutch driving licence you may keep driving as a resident of Great Britain until your seventieth birthday (if you arrived at 67 or later, for three years). So there is no deadline panic as in some countries. Exchanging it for a British licence is moreover possible without a single test: you pick up the D1 form at a post office with DVLA services, send it off with £43 and your Dutch licence, and after about three weeks you have a British one. Many Dutch people do it in the first year — not because they must, but because in daily life a British driving licence is your handiest proof of identity, in a country that has no identity cards.

Bringing the car: it's allowed, and this is how it works

Your own car falls under the same Transfer of Residence relief as your household goods (six months of ownership and use), so import tax need not be a barrier. After that, three counters await:

1. NOVA, within 14 days. Every car that permanently enters the UK you report to HMRC via the Notification of Vehicle Arrivals. With your ToR number no duty follows; reporting late can bring a fine.
2. Inspection. An EU car travels on the manufacturer's Certificate of Conformity, but a left-hand-drive car additionally needs a GB conversion inspection (IVA, £100). And that inspection is strict on the very point everyone wants to tape over: the headlights must really dip for left-hand traffic — stickers and beam benders are not accepted — and the speedometer must show mph.
3. DVLA registration. With the V55/5 form, your original Dutch registration certificate and the inspection certificate, the car gets a British number plate: £55 registration plus the vehicle tax (for most cars around £200 a year). From the car's third birthday an annual MOT comes with it (at most £54.85), and you insure before the first metre — driving uninsured is a criminal offence in the UK.

The sums you have to do beforehand

All in all, the importing itself is manageable: NOVA costs nothing, the registration £55, the inspection £100. The real costs are elsewhere. The headlight conversion ranges per model from a switch to hundreds of euros in units. Overtaking in a left-hand-drive car on a British country road stays awkward every day, and on sale it's worth less on the British market. And whoever goes to live in or around London: a car that doesn't meet the ULEZ standards (petrol roughly before 2006, diesel before September 2015) pays £12.50 per day there.

Set that against what your Dutch car fetches on sale at home, and for many families the honest outcome is: sell it in the Netherlands, and buy a right-hand-drive one in England — straight away or after a few months. Not because bringing it is impossible, but because the sum rarely wins. Do work it out on paper before the removal company arrives; having the car brought over later is always still possible, within twelve months even while keeping the ToR relief.