The register is called MIAFTR, and insurers file to it rather than to DVLA. That single fact is why a car can pass every free check you can run and still have been declared a total loss. Free clues do exist (a gap in the MOT record, a freshly issued V5C, a price that undercuts the market by a suspicious margin) but clues only raise questions. The register answers them.
Can you check if a car is written off for free?
Not definitively: no free official check shows write-off status. DVLA's free vehicle enquiry covers tax, MOT and SORN; the free MOT history shows tests and mileage. Neither touches insurance records, because a write-off is an insurer's decision, not DVLA's; there is no public register of them. Even GOV.UK's own guide to buying a repaired write-off tells buyers to get a private history check. When the people who run the free data point you at a paid check, believe them.
What is MIAFTR and who runs it?
MIAFTR (the Motor Insurance Anti-Fraud and Theft Register) is where UK insurers record the vehicles they write off or log as stolen. It's run by the Motor Insurers' Bureau (MIB), and since late 2025 it has lived on MIB's Navigate data platform under a new name (Vehicle Salvage & Theft Data), though the whole trade still calls it MIAFTR. The move changed nothing that matters to a buyer: it still isn't public. Access is limited to insurers, the police and licensed data users, which is why the definitive answer only ever comes through a paid check. When a report shows a write-off marker with a category and a date, that's where the line came from.
What do the write-off categories mean?
Four categories, one split that matters: Cat A and Cat B can never legally return to the road; Cat S and Cat N can. On GOV.UK's official definitions, a Category A vehicle must be crushed in its entirety; Category B means the body shell is crushed, though parts can be salvaged. Category S is repairable structural damage and Category N repairable non-structural damage; both can drive again once repaired to a roadworthy condition. Whether a repaired one is a bargain or a liability is a longer conversation, and our guide to Cat N and Cat S write-offs has it properly.
What are Cat C and Cat D write-offs?
The old categories: you'll still see them on anything written off before October 2017, and old markers are never reclassified. The Association of British Insurers (ABI) revised its Salvage Code of Practice on 1 October 2017, replacing C and D with S and N. The logic changed with the letters: C and D were about money (broadly, whether the repair bill was worth the car), while S and N describe the damage itself. How insurers do that arithmetic is a story of its own: see how the repair-or-write-off decision works.
What are the signs a car has been written off?
Price, paperwork and paint. The free clues cluster in four places:
- A price well under the market. The discount exists because the seller knows something the advert doesn't say.
- A gap in the MOT history. A car that went quiet for months mid-life may have spent them in a body shop.
- A freshly issued V5C. On a Cat S the insurer tells the DVLA, the old logbook is cancelled and the keeper has to apply for a new one, so a new-looking logbook on an older car deserves a question.
- Bodywork that argues with itself. Overspray on trim, panel gaps that wander, two ages of paint on one car.
None of these is proof, and their absence clears nothing, because a tidy Cat N repair is invisible from the kerb. Treat them as questions to ask alongside the rest of your used-car checks.
How do you find out for certain?
You pay for a check that reads the insurance data; there's no free route to certainty. Do the free work first, because it's genuinely useful: the MOT record and a walk around the car filter out plenty.
Our £5 report covers the official-record side (the full MOT history, the mileage trail read for dips, spec, keepers, plate and colour changes, scrappage and export markers) and, as our free versus paid guide spells out, it does not query the insurers' register. For the write-off marker itself you need our full history check, which reads that register and shows the category, the date and where the damage was.
And remember that a seller who says "never been in an accident" can be honestly wrong: the write-off may belong to a previous keeper, and a Cat N doesn't always reach the logbook. A few pounds of checking against a four-figure mistake is the easiest sum in car buying.