I always advise my clients that the first job of the New Year is to collect all the driving licences of their employees and check they are valid. There are a couple of great reasons for this.

1. The photocard driving licence was born on the 1st July 1998 in The Driving Licences (Community Driving Licence) Regulations 1998. Buried in these regulations in Section 8 is an amendment to The Road Traffic Act 1988 (c52) Section 99 that puts a 10 year life span on the photocard driving licence. This is to bring into line with the passport requirements to maintain a recent photograph of the bearer.
If your employees have these photocard driving licences and they are over ten years old and therefore invalid, you are allowing you employees to drive otherwise in accordance with a driving licence. This is an offence for which the senior management could be prosecuted.

2. If anyone got caught breaking the traffic laws, I am thinking of the drink drive laws here, then they will have been dealt with and had their licences removed by now.

To prevent your business falling foul of the law driving licences should be checked every six months, and any organisation checking licences over a period any longer than six months will find themselves, at some point, in serious trouble with either the HSE or the Police or both. At the same time it is good practice to check the eyesight of your staff. If you do this for all staff regardless of whether they drive or not you would have a much better case to present in court, should the need arise.

When you check the licences you should be on the look out for those that state replacement as there are drivers who apply for a replacement licence whilst the original has no points on it. They then produce the original to the courts and the ‘clean’ replacement to their employer. You should also be on the lookout for ten year old photocard licences. The expiry date is on the front of the photocard and is designated 4b.

If you do not feel you can do this yourself, then talk to a licence checking agency. We know some great ones!

Nigel Grainger
Senior Consultant

Fleet Risk Consultants

Managing your ‘duty of care’ can be tricky with European drivers as it is illegal to discriminate against them by having different rules for non-UK employees. Just because a licence is written in a different language does not mean you cannot accept its validity. But you will need to consider driving licences as part of your management process to avoid prosecution under Corporate Manslaughter Legislation.

However if you have employees from outside the European Union then the rules are different as for most of those employees they can only drive in the UK for a period of 12 months from date of entry into the UK. This does include the USA, so if you are employing people from the USA and they are driving and they are here for more than 12 months then they will need to take and pass a UK driving test if they wish to continue driving in the UK.

This is particularly important if you are engaging people on contracts for longer than 12 months as you can plan their test in good time.

Take for example a Football Club which signs a player from South America on a 3 year contract. One year from his date of entry to the UK he will need to sit a UK driving test to continue driving. The club has a duty to notify the player and also ensure he takes the test and prevents him driving if he does not have a licence. Also if he is given a sponsored vehicle to drive it gets a whole lot more complicated.

If drivers with a European driving licence need to undertake any testing for either a Taxi licence or to allow them to tow trailers then they will need to have a paper counterpart issued by the DVLA.

This is a very simplistic explanation and individual cases can vary, but if you need any specific advice then you can call the team on 01623 675833.

Nigel Grainger

Senior Consultant
Fleet Risk Consultants