By: A.C.
I was just a little confused by recent press coverage on driving licences and whether one needed to destroy a counterfoil attached to ones driving licence or not .
The press reporting seemed to focus on the problems of the summer holidays, hiring a car and photo card driving licences, problems associated with queues at hire desks and the counterfoil attached to that type of licence.
I am nowadays a bit ‘aul farrant’ and have never updated my driving licence from the paper version to a photo–card. So it still has the counterfoil.
Seeking proper guidance, and not wanting to be committing any offences, or destroying something I should not, I went to the Police Scotland website where amongst other useful FAQ’s I found this solid explanation of what is happening with driving licences.
Police Scotland advise:
“From the 08.06.15 the paper counterpart to photo-card driving licences will no longer be valid and will no longer be issued by the DVLA. Note this does not affect photo-card licences issued by the DVLA in Northern Ireland.
After 08.06.15, drivers who have a photocard driving licence should destroy their paper counterpart but must keep their photocard. Paper driving licences issued before photocards, are still valid and should not be destroyed.”
This seems to be another cost–cutting exercise by DVLA which will also affect drivers who have to present their licenses to a Court dealing with Traffic Offences. The object is to make all drivers’ convictions for motoring offences available online, and thus cut down on administration costs.
Police Scotland state:
“From 08.06.15, penalty points will no longer be added to driving licences. Drivers who commit endorsable motoring offences after this date will still have to pay the relevant fine and submit their driving licence to the court but the court will keep the paper counterpart and return only the photo-card to the driver. For paper licences the court will return the licence but won’t write/print the offence details on it. Therefore, from 08.06.15 photo-card and paper licences will not give accurate information about a driver’s endorsements. However, this record will be kept by the DVLA and drivers can check what it says online or by post via the link below:
https://www.gov.uk/view-driving-licence