{"id":6956,"date":"2014-12-22T14:11:09","date_gmt":"2014-12-22T14:11:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=6956"},"modified":"2014-12-22T14:11:09","modified_gmt":"2014-12-22T14:11:09","slug":"driving-licence-paper-counterpart-to-remain-in-use-until-june-2015","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/6956","title":{"rendered":"Driving licence paper counterpart to remain in use until June 2015"},"content":{"rendered":"

The government has announced that the paper counterpart of UK driver licences will now\u00a0remain in use until 8 June 2015,\u00a0extending the previous\u00a0removal date of 1 January 2015.<\/p>\n

What do I need to do?<\/h3>\n

For\u00a0anyone planning on hiring a van, this means you\u00a0will\u00a0<\/em><\/strong>still need to produce both parts of your driving licence<\/strong> — the photocard and the paper counterpart — when you hire a vehicle, until at least 8 June 2015.<\/p>\n

What’s happened?<\/h3>\n

Back in November, I wrote about<\/a> the\u00a0government’s plan to scrap the paper counterpart that forms part of UK driver licences, leaving only the photocard. The change was due to come into force from 1 January 2015.<\/p>\n

At the time, the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association (BVRLA) was flagging up concerns about the cost and practicality of this approach, as the planned new\u00a0online system was, of course, running late, and\u00a0was unlikely to be ready until the new year.<\/p>\n

The plan was that\u00a0the information contained on the paper counterpart to be available online, instead, so that individuals and businesses such as vehicle hire firms and transport operators, with a legitimate need for the information, could access\u00a0it online instead. However,\u00a0with\u00a0hire companies needing to check thousands of licences per year, and many transport operators and staffing agencies needing to run hundreds of checks, the\u00a0extra costs for businesses forced to use the DVLA’s existing driver data service would have been significant.<\/p>\n

Lobbying from the BVRLA and the Freight Transport Association appears to have convinced the government to put back the deadline — hopefully, the extra six months will be enough for the government’s IT contractors to get their act together and finish the planned new Share My Driving Record <\/em>system.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The government has announced that the date for the removal of the driver licence paper counterpart has been put back to 8 June 2015, from the previous planned date of 1 January 2015.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[309,43],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6956"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6957,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6956\/revisions\/6957"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6956"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6956"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6956"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}