So what’s going on? No more counterpart?
That’s right. The driving licence counterpart was introduced in 1998 to display information that could not fit on the photocard driving licence.
This information includes penalty points and provisional vehicle entitlement. But after 17 years the counterpart will be axed on 8 June 2015.
Why is DVLA abolishing the counterpart driving licence?
The reason is to reduce burden on motorists. For most drivers there simply isn’t a need to have this information on a piece of paper when it is now freely and easily available online. It also saves drivers from paying £20 to replace a lost or damaged counterpart.
There are of course many companies that use the counterpart driving licence to check if a driver can legally drive. Before the counterpart goes, DVLA will provide new online driving licence enquiry services in addition to those currently available by phone and post.
‘Share Driving Licence’ service
Tell me more? This will be the first of the new online services. The service, which will be available in the spring, will allow a driver to generate a unique, one-time access code for their driving licence record using DVLA’s View Driving Licence service. To access the customer’s record, the code from the customer and the last 8 digits of their driving licence number will need to be input into the online service. You can watch this video for a demonstration.
