£1000 Fine For Not Renewing Your Driving Licence Photo

Following up on a post by PCJ about the DVLA's licence renewal fiasco, I located this at Directgov which reveals that after 10 years you need to renew the photo on your licence card; in other words, renew your licence, which costs you £17.50. And if you forget, you face a possible fine of £1,000. Nice.

When to renew your licence
• Photocard licences are only valid for up to
10 years, although your entitlement to drive
will normally be valid until your 70th birthday.
• If you hold a photocard driving licence, by law
you must renew your photo every 10 years.
You could be fined up to £1000 if you don’t.

That's from the DVLA's own pdf. It required some poking around to find it.



This image on the Directgov site shows you what to look for on your card. The date at 4b is the expiry date of your photo. I don't remember receiving any information about this when I received mine years ago. I was, however, bemused to read the DVLA's reason for providing me with the old-fashioned bit of paper AND a plastic card: it was part of the government's drive to cut down the cost of paperwork(!).

What they failed to mention was that the move to change driving licences to plastic card format was part of the EU's plans to introduce a European driving licence, which was finally agreed among all member states in 2006. All national licences will have been phased out by 2032. I bet you didn't know that. And the reason for all this? Security and prevention of fraud, of course. What a surprise.

I also recall reading somewhere that when the UK government introduced the cards it didn't have the necessary computer equipment to read them, hence the continued issuing of the paper licence. Sounds familiar, doesn't it?