Forum menu
Dunno why the other thread was closed, but here is my experience:
Moved to France in 2002. Tried to swap my UK licence for a FR one, and was told by authorities that they wouldn't, as my UK one was valid, being an EU licence an' all.
Moved to DK in 2009 and discovered (at a car rental counter in Rome) that my UK photocard had expired. Called DVLA and explained the situation, and they told me I could apply for a replacement and just put [u]any[/u] UK address, such as my parents address - didn't have to be my real address.
This is the good part of the UK being about 100 years behind the rest of the world in terms of public record keeping. The bad part is that when you move house you have to suddenly acquire about 20 paper copies of your electricity bill in order to "prove" your new address - driving licence doesn't work, for the obvious reasons.
Mine is expired/traded for an Oz one. If I move home I'll convert back, not sure why I'd need 2.
Dunno why the other thread was closed,
Spam prevention, it was attracting "fake driving licence" posts.
Government are saying shred it and the aa are saying keep it. To hire a car abroad now you need a code from the dvla website which only lasts 72 hours
From the other thread ... is this correct ?
FWIW I have kept the paper part of mine, I mean I paid good money for it !
I just used my parents address In UK. Strictly speaking as a resident of Spain I should have changed over to a Spanish one at renewal time, but I knew I was only here for another year.
FWIW, I hired a car in Spain a couple of weeks ago and the guy serving me only wanted the plastic card part of the DL as that had all the info he needed.
living in Aus' on a long term business visa so don't have to get a Victorian license, considered getting one just for photo ID but manage a kids soccer team and "working with kids card" has a photo and is hard to get and is accepted as ID
- back in UK last year and Hertz made a big fuss about not having paper part - insisted on ringing DVLA and I had to authorise them to confirm to them that license was valid with no points - they then read my Australian address back to me off their records and thanked for being a regular customer
- saw some stuff about getting a code number that expires to hire a car in Europe - looks really good 😥
Every time I go abroad and am renting a car, I take my little wallet with the paper license and photocard. I take both of them out when I get to the counter. And every time I do, the representative says "No, no, no, sir, just the photocard please." 😐
If you are an expat resident in a EU country I thought you were supposed to swap your driving licence to a local one but a quick google showed me that to be wrong...
[url= http://europa.eu/youreurope/citizens/vehicles/driving/validity/index_en.htm ]EU licence change criteria[/url]
It seems that it remains valid until it runs out and then should be changed for local one.
My UK licence had to be changed to a Belgian licence.
Was a bugger because I lost my +3.5t validity because in Belgium its only valid if accompanied by a medical certificate.
On the plus side: its a system without points 🙂
I have a UK one and an NZ one.
Use the UK in NZ and the NZ in UK never had any issues with hiring cars etc. Also means I can speed and park wherever I want and not ignore the points/fines