Image: Rebel Wilson by Wikimedia Commons
Hollywood actor Rebel Wilson is facing criminal prosecution in the UK for failing to insure her Audi Q5 SUV while she was in the United States waiting for her second child to be born.
Wilson, 46, has been charged with keeping a motor vehicle that does not meet insurance requirements - an offence under the UK’s Continuous Insurance Enforcement regime - following a prosecution brought by the DVLA. The case was first dealt with under the Single Justice Procedure before being referred to an open court hearing at Highbury Corner Magistrates’ Court on November 30. Wilson has pleaded not guilty.
Wilson and her wife, fashion designer Ramona Agruma, were in Los Angeles for approximately five months while Agruma was in the late stages of pregnancy and recovering from complications. During that time, the insurance on Wilson’s Audi Q5 - kept in a private underground garage at their £3.5 million Whitehall apartment - lapsed. The vehicle was not driven and was not kept on a public road.
Upon returning to London with their new baby on May 28, Wilson discovered the insurance had lapsed, took out a new policy under Agruma’s name, and says the car was not driven until that cover was in place. She wrote to the court explaining the sequence of events and apologising.
“Please accept our sincerest apologies, we are not UK residents and I was unaware of the requirement to keep a car insured,” Wilson wrote. “I believed because we were overseas and because the car was not at all in use or parked on the road, that it was OK for the car insurance to temporarily lapse.”
The DVLA alleges the Audi was uninsured on May 26. It wrote to Wilson at her Whitehall address offering a fixed penalty, which she did not respond to, before opting to bring a criminal prosecution.
Whether Wilson’s reasoning will satisfy the court remains to be seen. What is clear is how Continuous Insurance Enforcement operates. Under CIE, introduced in 2011, it is a legal offence to be the registered keeper of an uninsured vehicle in the UK unless a Statutory Off Road Notification (SORN) has been declared. The DVLA does not ask whether a car is being driven. It asks whether it is insured or SORNed. A car sitting in a private underground garage is still subject to CIE unless a SORN is in place - a point that is widely misunderstood, particularly by non-UK residents unfamiliar with the regime.
Wilson is not the first public figure to discover this the hard way. In August, singer Ed Sheeran was convicted and fined £666 at Bradford magistrates’ court for failing to insure his 1966 Aston Martin while it underwent long-term restoration - having incorrectly assumed the workshop’s motor trade policy covered his CIE obligation as registered keeper. It did not. In October, Tottenham Hotspur forward Omar Marmoush was fined £408 after his £250,000 McLaren 720S was found to be uninsured and not SORNed, the penalty apparently going unanswered at a former Manchester address following his summer move to London.
The pattern across all three cases is consistent: internationally mobile, high-net-worth individuals with multiple vehicles and addresses, whose insurance administration either moves too slowly or stalls during a relocation or extended absence. Any vehicle not in active use should either carry uninterrupted insurance or a SORN - and clients travelling for extended periods, relocating, or placing vehicles in long-term storage need to be explicitly advised of that before cover lapses. The free askMID service allows anyone to check whether a vehicle is showing as insured on the Motor Insurance Database, and that check costs nothing at a renewal conversation.
Wilson’s court date is November 30. If convicted, the maximum penalty for a CIE offence determined at court is a £1,000 fine.
