No more counterpart...
The driving licence counterpart was introduced in 1998 to display information that could not fit on
the photocard driving licence. Predominantly, it gives information on penalty points and provisional vehicle entitlement. After 17 years of dutifully doing its job the counterpart will be abolished on 8 June 2015.
This means that from the 8 June 2015, DVLA will stop issuing the paper counterpart.
Those in circulation after this date will no longer have any legal status and should be destroyed.
The reason for abolishing the counterpart 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 industries, such as <insert relevant trade>, that use the counterpart 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
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. Watch this video for a demonstration.
‘Access to Driver Data’ service
DVLA is developing this service for those who would prefer driver data to be displayed or interpreted directly using their own software. It acts as a business-to-business interface (API) to provide the latest relevant driving licence information with the consent of the driver.
DVLA has produced a briefing pack to give more detail on the abolition of the counterpart and the new and existing enquiry services. Please email or the <insert relevant organisation> for a copy.
You can keep up to date with progress of the abolition of the counterpart on DVLA’s blog.
The most up to date information for members of the public is available at www.gov.uk/dvla/nomorecounterpart