![]() ![]() Traffic Commissioners will expect O-licence holders to do this as part of fulfilling their duty to observe the undertakings made in the licence application but other employers of drivers should also do so as part of their risk management. Further checks should be made at intervals in case additional endorsements and penalty points have been added to the licence or in extreme cases the licence has been suspended. Statistics from the AA show that one in 650 drivers (this includes all licence categories) is driving while disqualified and one in 300 has a revoked or expiring licence. Neither does it matter whether the vehicle being driven belongs to the company or is the driver’s own car (and in the latter case it is important to check that the car is insured for use on an employer’s business).Įmployers should record the driving licence details as part of the employee induction process but also make a check with DVLA at that time to confirm their accuracy. This is true equally for those whose actual job is driving, such as lorry drivers, and for those whose main job is not driving but who may occasionally be required to drive in the course of it. The importance of checking driving licencesĮmployers of people who are required to drive in the course of their work have a duty of care to ensure that those people have the correct and valid licence for the vehicles they drive. To replace the counterpart DVLA has provided a new online Share Driving Licence service to enable individuals to check their own driving record and also to generate a one-time code valid for 21 daysthat will enable a third party such as an employer or car hire company to verify the licence details. A proportion of the 445,000 replacements for lost counterparts issued last year at a cost of £20 a time to the licence holder will probably have been such fraudulent copies. ![]() However, conscientious transport managers should have long ago stopped accepting the paper counterpart for the purpose of licence checks in favour of the established Electronic Driver Entitlement Checking Service or by post due to the ease with which a fraudulent “clean” copy could have been obtained. The abolition may have caused great upset among some members of the public. All penalty points and endorsements will now be recorded electronically on the DVLA database. Under several EU driver licensing Directives (the first being Directive 96/47/EC) there is no requirement for the counterpart and the UK government abolished it on 8 June as part of its “Red Tape Challenge” to reduce unnecessary administration and save an estimated £8 million. Ever since photocard driving licences replaced paper ones in the UK in 1998 there has been an accompanying paper counterpart to enable the recording of endorsements and penalty points that could not be done on the photocard. ![]()
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