Starting from today (8 June 2015), the paper part of the UK driving licence has been scrapped.
One of the first groups of people to be affected are van and car hire customers, who will now need to provide online access to their driving histories when they collect hire cars.
The reason for this is that your driving licence photocard, which remains valid, does not contain any information about licence endorsements or convictions.
From now on, when hiring a vehicle you will need to provide your photocard and an online check code to enable the hire company to access your licence details on the gov.uk (DVLA) website.
This is available through a new ‘View your driving licence information’ service.
We’d also suggest printing out the licence information report from the gov.uk website when you generate your check code, in case your hire company is unable to check the information online.
To generate a licence check, you’ll need your driving licence and your National Insurance number:
>> Click here for the gov.uk driving licence check service <<
This is FREE but the check code is only valid for 72 hours, so needs to be generated within three days of your car hire pick-up date.
To help you get started, I’ve produced an illustrated guide to generating a driving licence check code, here.
I’ve also written more extensively about the new rules, here.
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