DVLA Scrapping Counterpart Licences

Is it good news or bad? The DVLA have made their intentions known in regards to removing the paper part of your licence and plan to do so by 2015, straight away our thoughts as a rental company are that this could cause a major problem in regards to our industry. Often when people hire a car we have to do a licence check in order to make sure they have no convictions or too many points on their licence as we don’t want people voiding the insurance, this is an important safety measure that every car hire company worldwide has to take when someone doesn’t have their counterpart.

When the DVLA get rid of the counterpart licence this is going to throw up a lot of issues as when someone doesn’t have a counterpart we have to do this check costing £10 meaning that every one of our customers would be charged this extra cost, which just isn’t ideal. As you could have guessed there was many enquiries from worried companies and even regular hirers as the result could have meant higher rental prices. The BVRLA (British Vehicle Rental & Licensing Agency) have been put in charge by the DVLA of producing a system that will allow industries to check licences and they have recently assured the industries involved that they will deliver on this.

There are 10 million people who hire a car and need a check with the DVLA every year and if the system doesn’t work it could cost the industry a lot of money meaning they will have to significantly increase the cost of their hired vehicles, which no one wants as hired cars are essential to making or breaking peoples holidays. The DVLA and the BVRLA have a very hard task on their hands in pleasing both the car rental industry and the customers that regularly hire.