{"id":7417,"date":"2015-04-29T13:39:30","date_gmt":"2015-04-29T13:39:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/?p=7417"},"modified":"2015-05-19T16:10:15","modified_gmt":"2015-05-19T16:10:15","slug":"why-van-hire-companies-may-refuse-your-uk-driving-licence-without-online-access-code","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/7417","title":{"rendered":"Why van hire companies may refuse your UK driving licence without online access code"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>Update 19 May 2015:\u00a0<\/strong>We&#8217;ve produced <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/7459\">a step-by-step guide\u00a0showing how to get a driving licence check code<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Anyone planning to hire a van (or a car) in June, including overseas, needs to remember that the paper\u00a0counterpart of the UK driving licence\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/6956\">will no longer be valid from 8 June<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Currently, details of any endorsements and convictions are kept on the paper part of your licence, which you need to show when you hire a vehicle. However, from 8 June, this information will only be available online, so hire\u00a0companies will need to check drivers&#8217; details online\u00a0when checking their licences.<\/p>\n<p><em>This applies when\u00a0for car and van hire abroad,\u00a0as well as for car and van hire in the UK.<\/em><\/p>\n<h3>How will it work?<\/h3>\n<p>Although it&#8217;s possible for a hire company to phone the DVLA and check your licence details, they won&#8217;t be keen on this, as it costs around 51p per minute and is\u00a0not a 24\/7 service.<\/p>\n<p>The only practical solutions will be online &#8212; and\u00a0that means that you, the hire customer,\u00a0will need to be prepared to help.<\/p>\n<h3>1. Share My Driving Licence<\/h3>\n<p>Most hire companies are going to be relying on hire customers\u00a0providing them with access to their online details using a new DVLA system called\u00a0<strong><em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/view-driving-licence\" target=\"_blank\">Share My Driving Licence<\/a>.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n<p>You will need to visit this site\u00a0<em>within 2 days of picking up your hire van or car\u00a0<\/em>in order to generate a unique access code\u00a0that\u00a0the hire company can use to view your driving licence details online.<\/p>\n<p><em>Share My Driving Licence\u00a0<\/em>is\u00a0<strong>free to use<\/strong>, but to generate your access code, you will\u00a0need to provide\u00a0the following information:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>Your driving licence number<\/li>\n<li>Your National Insurance number<\/li>\n<li>The postcode on your driving licence<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>(this system doesn&#8217;t work for licences issued in Northern Ireland)<\/p>\n<p>If you try to collect a hire vehicle without providing a <em>Share My Driving Licence<\/em> code, you may be able to do it on the day &#8212;\u00a0but\u00a0only if you have your National Insurance number with you and are able to get internet access. It&#8217;s definitely going to be easier to do it in advance.<\/p>\n<h3>2. Surely there&#8217;s a better way?<\/h3>\n<div id=\"attachment_7232\" style=\"width: 360px\" class=\"wp-caption alignright\"><img aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-7232\" loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-7232\" src=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/licencecheck-1-sm.jpg\" alt=\"LICENCECHECK RealTime\" width=\"350\" height=\"233\" srcset=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/licencecheck-1-sm.jpg 350w, https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/licencecheck-1-sm-300x200.jpg 300w, https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/03\/licencecheck-1-sm-50x33.jpg 50w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 350px) 100vw, 350px\" \/><p id=\"caption-attachment-7232\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">LICENCECHECK RealTime is the first product to provide real-time UK driver licence checks for companies ahead of the abolition of the paper counterpart.<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Obviously, the sensible solution to this problem is for hire companies to be able to check your driving licence details online for themselves, without you needing to jump through hoops beforehand.<\/p>\n<p>This will be possible, but the DVLA is\u00a0relying on commercial partners to develop new systems to provide real-time driving licence checks, and at present, there&#8217;s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/archives\/7229\">only one such system available in the UK, to the best of my knowledge<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>What&#8217;s more, that system, called LICENCECHECK RealTime, was only launched at the start of March, so it won&#8217;t be in widespread use, yet.<\/p>\n<p>I suspect that all the big companies will rapidly develop or buy in real-time licence checking systems like this, to avoid huge disruption to their business,\u00a0and to ensure that licences are all checked properly &#8212; not just nodded through with a look at the photocard only.<\/p>\n<p>However, many of these systems aren&#8217;t ready yet, and smaller van hire companies may take longer to adopt these solutions. In the meantime, you\u00a0will be required\u00a0to provide access to your\u00a0own details using the\u00a0<em>Share My Driving Licence\u00a0<\/em>system, which you can find here:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/view-driving-licence\" target=\"_blank\">https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/view-driving-licence<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>You can find more information\u00a0in <a href=\"https:\/\/www.gov.uk\/government\/news\/driving-licence-changes\" target=\"_blank\">this article on the gov.uk website<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>The UK driving licence paper counterpart is being scrapped from 8 June 2015, meaning drivers will have to provide hire companies with access to their details through a new online system &#8212; you need to be prepared for this.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[1678,1431],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7417"}],"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=7417"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7417\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7470,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7417\/revisions\/7470"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7417"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7417"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.vanrental.co.uk\/vanblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7417"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}