IVA
IVA stands for Individual Vehicle Approval and relates to Type Approval of vehicles in the UK. Type Approval is the process which ensures that vehicles, their systems and components, meet the appropriate environmental and safety standards for use in the UK and Europe.
For your vehicle to be registered into the UK it must show that it has some form of Type Approval. In the case of new right hand drive vehicles supplied at your local retailer they will be supplied by the manufacturer with a mass scale Type Approval called a certificate of conformity.
For the rest of us who either have a vehicle we are importing from outside the EU or a left hand drive vehicle, we can use the IVA test to gain the type approval we need to register our vehicle.
DVSA
An IVA test is undertaken by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency at a DVSA testing station or a DVSA approved designated premises like our own. The DVSA staff visit our site throughout the week and carry out inspections on our clients vehicles accompanied by one of our IVA technicians. Having an experienced technician presenting your vehicle for test is a massive advantage over presenting the vehicle for test yourself because you are often required to show certain components of the vehicle to an examiner that may be behind trim panels or in hard to reach areas of the engine bay. Once satisfied they issue IVA pass certificates that we use to register your vehicle with the DVLA.
Your vehicle will always need some level of modification to achieve UK type approval and our technicians have the experience to pre prepare your vehicle to IVA standard so when it is inspected we have the confidence it will pass every time.
We will handle all the paperwork involved with your application electronically with our contacts at VOSA so you won’t waste any time posting paperwork back and forth until it is correct.