DVLA Service Available for Employers
Making sure your drivers are properly licenced to drive commercial vehicles is really important. The primary reason for this is the that you want to ensure that your drivers are safe and reliable to drive a large goods vehicle (LGV) for your company, as well as limiting the risk of fines you may get for employing a disqualified driver.
As a compliant transport operator, you’ll be carrying out regular checks to confirm your drivers have the right entitlements, you will also be responsible for checking there is no action recorded against their licences. such as suspension or disqualification.
With the DVLA’s check someone’s driving licence information service you can do these checks online. The driver has to log in first and give you permission to access their details.
Why Is This Tool Important?
This tool can give those who are a transport operator the opportunity to check that potential drivers are safe and compliant within their field. This is also handy to check that your current drivers are compliant within their licence regulations.
The DVLA released a video, which discusses how you can use the online licence checking service to its full potential.
It should be noted that obtaining someone’s personal information without their consent is a criminal offence.
The service consists of a two-step process.
Step 1
The driving licence holder must log into the Driving licence service. Doing this will generate a one-time passcode which can be shared with the person wishing to access their information. They will also need the last eight digits of the driving licence number to access.
Check Code Considerations
- The check code is case sensitive.
- The code is valid for 21 days.
- The code can only be used once.
What You Can View
This service allows you to check the following.
- The overall driving record, such as the vehicle categories the driver can operate.
- Check for any penalty points or driving disqualifications.
- Ensure the person and the licence information correlate.
This can also show you if the current licence has either been revoked or cancelled.
Step 2
As the licence holder, once you have the information required in step 1, you can access all latest information regarding the licence in question. Or, provide your generated one-time passcode to the person(s) or company which require this.
What You Need to Check
In order to access this tool, you will need the following.
- Driving Licence Number.
- National Insurance Number- If you have lost this, you can access your NI number on the government website.
- Post Code on the Driving Licence
Mitigate Liability & Risk
In the instance that a driver is caught without a valid driving licence, both the driver and the company who hired the driver can face fines and additional punishments.
Furthering this, if a driver who does not have a valid licence causes an accident where someone is injured, criminal proceedings and penalties can be pushed to the business itself. This can be crippling for them, as it could damage their reputation drastically.
Having a good system in place to conduct regular checks of licences with permission of the driver is one way of limiting the probability of one of the above scenarios to occur.
Authorised Personnel
Most and foremost, your fleet manager will be the one who will conduct driver licence checks.
