Strangely, it seems that after sending their driving licences to the DVLA, for a change of address, or renewal, some drivers have found that they are coming back with categories, or classes they were entitled to drive previously now missing.
We are writing this, just in case any of our readers have their licence back, but not checked to see if you they have the same entitlement when they got them back (after all, who would check that?)
The main area seems to be where a driver holds both a car entitlement and a motorcycle entitlement and it’s been reported that in a number of cases, on return, the motor cycle entitlement is missing.
Whilst this isn’t claimed to be a widespread problem and the DVLA are aware of the situation, they have only said they will investigate each case individually and I assume that means ‘put it right’ but it appears not to be as straight forward as that as Motor Cycle News say they have hundred of riders contacting them having had the motor cycle entitlement removed from their licences after sending them back to the DVLA for various reasons.
It appears at this point, that the DVLA are not offering a reasonable way to resolve this other than asking for production of a riders original “test pass” certificate, which in many cases found its way into the bin years ago and the motorcycle community are not happy with this.
Its been suggested that in future to avoid this kind of mistake, that the DVLA use a kind of system like the passport office do, whereby they return your old passport to you after changes or renewal, with its corner clipped off and that sound like a jolly good idea as it works with passports, so why not with licences.
Our advice to anyone who returns their licence to the DVLA is to take a photocopy of it before you send it (preferably a colour copy) and hang on to that until you get your licence back and are happy that both match.
The DVLA say errors are rare and they investigate every case and try and resolve things as quickly as possible, but if their co-operation in this case is indicative of trying to help, it appears they are not hitting the spot on this occasion.
Seems there have been a little over 950 complaints about returned licences since 2005, but clearly we don’t know the individual reasons for the complaints, but that number is low, so in true “Crime Watch” fashion, these things are very rare, so sleep tight and don’t have nightmares!
