15 October 2015

Drivers told by DVLA not to print online licence record for employers

Employees have been told not to print a copy of their driving licence record and give it to their employer.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) introduced the online checking of employees’ driving licences earlier this year. Two separate checking services have been developed:

• View Driving Licence (VDL) is intended for drivers to check their own records only, and is not intended to be used by third parties.
• Share My Driving Licence (SMDL) enables employers to access employees’ driving records subject to the latter giving permission. To share their licence details, drivers access the VDL service and generate a one-time-use unique code that is valid for up to 72 hours – the driver can then share the code with their employer. The employer can then input the code and the last eight digits of an employee’s driving licence number to the SMDL page to view a driver’s licence status, endorsements and the vehicles they are eligible to drive.

However, it has become apparent that some employees are logging into their driver licence record and printing off a copy and voluntarily providing it to their employer.

Paul Jeffreys, corporate services, DVLA, told an ACFO seminar: ‘VDL is intended for the individual, so that’s their own personal driving licence record. If sharing it, then do not print that record off because there is information on it which should not be shared with others, such as medical information and driving information, particularly disqualifications.

‘With the insurance industry, it’s widely accepted that they only need five years (of driving history), yet people believe they look for disqualifications for up to 11 years. We do not release that information because that is what is agreed with the insurance industry.

‘If drivers share a VDL print off they will be unwittingly providing people with more information than they are entitled to. It’s actually illegal to ask for that information, so if people are asking for it, they shouldn’t be. They should stay within their remits and just look up endorsements in the last five years.’