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Licence change will have impact

AS we reported earlier in the year, the driving licence paper counterpart will be abolished on 8 June 2015. (Where do they get these dates from? Why not 1 June??)

The abolition will have some impact on companies operating company car fleets or who have drivers using their own cars for business purposes as employers have a duty of care towards their employees and drivers. A fleet manager should be checking employee’s licences at least annually to ensure they are still legally entitled to drive, however the counterpart is the document that shows the driving history.

AS we reported earlier in the year, the driving licence paper counterpart will be abolished on 8 June 2015. (Where do they get these dates from? Why not 1 June??)

The abolition will have some impact on companies operating company car fleets or who have drivers using their own cars for business purposes as employers have a duty of care towards their employees and drivers. A fleet manager should be checking employee’s licences at least annually to ensure they are still legally entitled to drive, however the counterpart is the document that shows the driving history. From 8 June managers will need to use the DVLA online record, which will be the only legal source of the driver’s history, penalty points, endorsements and any disqualification details.

From 8 June 2015, fleets will have three options for checking a driver’s details:

They can call the DVLA’s premium rate telephone service. This costs 51p per minute and the driver must be present.

They can ask drivers to provide a printed copy of their licence details using the DVLA’s new Share Driving Licence (SMDL) service, which is accessible via the www.gov.uk digital government services portal. The service is free and the details can be separately verified online by using a one-time-only DVLA access code supplied by the driver. However experience tells us this can take up to 15 minutes per driver.

They can use an accredited driving licence verification service provider, see the BVRLA website for details of members offering such a service.

To continue this ‘dry as dust’ article it needs to be pointed out that holding this information imposes upon the company responsibilities under data protection legislation ( hey, I didn’t make the rules, don’t shout at me!). In addition an employer might think it pertinent to check the record of a high mileage user more often, after all they have more opportunity to transgress.

Life just gets more and more complicated, doesn’t it?

All of the above is really important, but if you are still reading this and you have decided to continue providing company cars, then the team at Alpha Contracts Leasing Ltd in Northampton are able to provide quotations across all makes and models, cars or commercials. Check out the offers on the website www.alphacontracts.co.uk or call us on 01604 756620.

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