Driving Licence Expiry Date

[kerrensimmonds]

Sorry if this has been on the Forum before - but I only found out about it today. I pass on the warning to anyone who does not know. I checked mine and 4b IS my 70th birthday but that might be because I only got the licence within the last year.

Very Important for drivers……
Please pass on to all workers / volunteers.
Unwitting motorists face £1,000 fines as thousands of photo card driving licences expire
Thousands of motorists are at risk of being fined up to £1,000 because they are unwittingly driving without a valid licence.
They risk prosecution after failing to spot the extremely small print on their photo card licence which says it automatically expires after 10 years and has to be renewed - even though drivers are licensed to drive until the age of 70.
The fiasco has come to light a decade after the first batch of photo licences was issued in July 1998, just as the they start to expire.
Motoring organisations blamed the Government for the fiasco and said 'most' drivers believed their licences were for life.

A mock-up driving licence from 1998 when the photo cards were launched shows the imminent expiry date as item '4b'
They said officials had failed to publicise sufficiently the fact that new-style licences - unlike the old paper ones - expire after a set period and have to be renewed.
To rub salt into wounds, drivers will have to a pay £17.50 to renew their card - a charge which critics have condemned as a 'stealth tax' and which will earn the Treasury an estimated £437million over 25 years.
Official DVLA figures reveal that while 16,136 expired this summer, so far only 11,566 drivers have renewed, leaving 4,570 outstanding.
With another 300,000 photo card licences due to expire over the coming year, experts fear the number of invalid licences will soar, putting thousands more drivers in breach of the law and at risk of a fine.
At the heart of the confusion is the small print on the tiny credit-card-size photo licence, which is used in conjunction with the paper version.
Just below the driver name on the front of the photo card licence is a series of dates and details - each one numbered.
Number 4b features a date in tiny writing, but no explicit explanation as to what it means.
The date's significance is only explained if the driver turns over the card and reads the key on the back which states that '4b' means 'licence valid to'.
Even more confusingly, an adjacent table on the rear of the card sets out how long the driver is registered to hold a licence - that is until his or her 70th birthday.
A total of 25million new-style licences have been issued but - motoring experts say - drivers were never sufficiently warned they would expire after 10 years.
Motorists who fail to renew their licences in time are allowed to continue driving. But the DVLA says they could be charged with 'failing to surrender their licence', an offence carrying a £1,000 fine.
AA president, Edmund King said: 'It is not generally known that photo card licences expire: there appears to be a lack of information that people will have to renew these licences.
'People think they have already paid them for once over and that is it.
'It will come as a surprise to motorists and a shock that they have to pay an extra £17.50.'
The AA called on the Government to use the annual £450million from traffic enforcement fines to offset the renewal charge.

[J.R.]

I've still got the old green paper one. Saves all the trouble.

Come to think of it - I've still got my little red cardboard licence !

[Katharine]

I've been googling on this, although like JR I have the paper sort. In one place, on a government site it says that it is only the photo that expires after 10 years. It also says that they will send you a reminder when it is due to expire, so there may not be too much need to worry.

My green paper one is bilingual - they were not amused in Brunei when I wanted to get a Brunei licence on the strength of the UK licence!

[sejintenej]

[quote="Katharine"]I've been googling on this, although like JR I have the paper sort. In one place, on a government site it says that it is only the photo that expires after 10 years. It also says that they will send you a reminder when it is due to expire, so there may not be too much need to worry.
quote]

I like someone with a sense of humour, Katherine; I have had letters sent to me which were apparently returned by the Post Office to sender as "gone away" or equivalent with no attempt to deliver them to what were subsequently shown to be the correct address. Internet rules prevent me from translating into colloquial English the answer I got when I complained.

[Vonny]

What a complete rip off

[kerrensimmonds]

I guess that the physical appearance of most of us will change over 10 years. But whether the charge of £17.50 every ten years is justified or not remains an issue. It boils down to £1.75 per year for permission to drive on UK roads (and in Europe if the licence so allows). Is that so much....? Or are we talking principles, here?

[J.R.]

Its a bit like the proposed identity-cards.

I have no problem carrying one, but I'm b*ggered if I'm going to pay for one.

A 'wag' who drinks in our 'local' was recently stopped by plod on a 'routine-check' and asked if he could identify himself.

He bent down and looking in the police car wing-mirror, replied......

'YES - It's definitely me !!!'

[wurzel]

Apparently the way around it is that a change of address is free and you get to send a new photo, hence if your house suddenly acquires a new name you can get the updated licence for 10 years, or move to aq mates house for a week then move back

[jhopgood]

Apparently the way around it is that a change of address is free and you get to send a new photo, hence if your house suddenly acquires a new name you can get the updated licence for 10 years, or move to aq mates house for a week then move back

I have used that route, and although I cannot remember what I paid, I think I used the Post Office to check the form, it wasn't a great deal of money for the full package, and I got it back quite quickly.

[Misterbee]

WARNING
My wife and I got our 10 year reminders through in late December 08
We submitted our completed forms along with new colour passport photos on 12 Jan 09
On 19 Jan 09 we received our new photo ID licences along with the paper counterparts
The quality of the douments was so bad that we returned them the same day demanding that documents of an acceptable quality be issued immediately
The DVLA demand colour ID photos, yet they are reproduced on the licence in Black & White. In our case both photos were so badly reproduced that no recogniseable features were present.
Our signatures, which they electronically scan and then reproduce on both the Photo ID licence and the paper counterpart, were faint and in my case illegible.
Yesterday I phoned them and eventually, after listening to automated systems for 5 minutes, I managed to make contact with a human at the DVLA.
They said I should allow at least three to four weeks for my rejected licence to be re-issued. They couldn't acknowledge receipt of our returned documents as they wait three weeks before they open each days post! - We got our first set of documents back in a week!
They could not tell me why they did not issue a colour photo on the license! They confirmed it should be Black & White.
They could not discuss their quality control process - take it from that they don't have one!
They refused to confirm whether we could continue driving without being in possession of a current licence in spite of it being their fault that they won't be able to issue replacements within the original time scale. Fortunately before returning our documents I scanned them into my PC and reproduced copies that we currently carry.
So dear readers BEWARE even when you comply with the DVLA, don't be surprised if they don't reciprocate!

[AKAP]

As a retired police officer (2005) I am relying on memory and no changes in the law since 2005.
Misterbee: you cannot commit the offence of driving without a licenece, you have one it just happens to be at DVLA.
You would not be able to produce a licenec at the request of a constable ( a different and more minor offence). I would be amazed at anyone launching a prosecution for this second offence as no Magistrate would convict you once it was confirmed that your inability to produce a licence was down to the inefficency of DVLA.
Perhaps JR can confirm.

[sejintenej]

As a retired police officer (2005) I am relying on memory and no changes in the law since 2005.
Misterbee: you cannot commit the offence of driving without a licenece, you have one it just happens to be at DVLA.
You would not be able to produce a licenec at the request of a constable ( a different and more minor offence). I would be amazed at anyone launching a prosecution for this second offence as no Magistrate would convict you once it was confirmed that your inability to produce a licence was down to the inefficency of DVLA.
Perhaps JR can confirm.

Andrew; you omit several pertinent factors:
- a magistrate has to obey the law. If a person does not display a valid driving licence within a stated period and the law states that he has to display a valid driving licence within that period then he/she is guilty, guilty and still guilty, having a stain on his charecter for the next five years or so. The magistrate should agree that there are mitigating factors and take that into account in sentencing, perhaps with a warning not to go on the roads until the licence appears..
- the sheer terror that many people experience when hauled up in front of the courts even if they are innocent
- the fact that there are those who will plead guilty in the belief that because the police are supposed to know the law and have chosen to take them to court then they have to be guilty and / or that they will plead guilty just to avoid going to court
- the cost to the accused in taking time off work, legal representation, transport and other incidentals which he/she may not be able to afford if they go to court
- the threat (actual or otherwise) that if the police officer does not get a guilty verdict then he/she will find another reason to take the accused to court (I remember a senior officer stating that the average person breaks the law 30 times before he/she gets to work each morning - we simply cannot avoid getting "dun" if an officer takes it into his head that he doesn't like us)
-the manner in which a senior police officer can demand entry into a home and then reduce an unprotected young woman to near tears because he disagrees with her husband's views.

Sorry AKAP; you were probably OK but there are some out there with different priorities. It is infinitely better for us to avoid the police at all costs

[AKAP]

I don't know what your experience of the police force was, but it was obviously bad.
I stand by my original point. It would be a waste of time launching a prosecution in the circumstances outlined. The CPS, who are the prosecuting authority, would need to apply a number of tests before putting this in front of the Mags. It would fail at least one. "Is the prosecution in the public interest?" Prosecuting someone who is unable to produce a licence because it's at DVLA could never be in the public interest.
A discussion of the fixed penalty system would be a different matter, I think we would end up in agreement,too many people pay the penalty when it would probably be thrown out in court (I understand their reasons why but it does not serve the causes of justice).