Five reasons to celebrate the end of the paper UK driving licence

From January 2015 Britain’s much-derided paper counterpart driving licence is being phased out. This is A Good Thing, ending an annoying bi-partite arrangement that’s blighted drivers’ pockets for 16 years.

Driving licences have been with us since 1903, when they were first mandated – but the current, annoyingly two-part licences have been in use since 1998, with a bank card-sized photocard accompanied by a printed sheet of A4. Finally, Whitehall computer systems have become advanced enough to bypass the need for Brits to hold the paper record in their wallets. Here’s why we should all celebrate their demise:

Many of us have been there. You’re queuing for a hire car at the airport only to realise that you don’t have the counterpart driving licence with you. Cue embarrassing delay while you phone home/give up/pay extra for a personal phonecall to the DVLA in Swansea...

Let’s be honest. Most of us don’t have a pristine counterpart driving licence. Chances are, yours is either as crumpled as last week’s fish ‘n’ chips wrapper, held together by sellotape or Missing In Action. From January all that important licensing information will be held in the cloud by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA).

Do Britain’s 30 million odd drivers really need to hold a sheet of paper to prove their driving ability? The last time we checked this was 2014 and most of our lives is now lived in the cloud not printed on copy-proof paper and posted out at great expense. In 2011 when the measures were announced, then transport secretary Justine Greening estimated the cost saving would come to £8 million.

No longer will you see a regular reminder of any speeding fines such as SP50s on your counterpart driving licence; from January 2015 they’ll all be kept online. The underground geeks’ code language will become an ancient tongue, with extra brownie points for knowing what an MS50 infringement is (motor racing on the public highway) or the lesser-seen DD90 (‘furious driving’).

The official advice is this: ‘If you don’t think you’ll need [your paper counterpart driving licence], then you may destroy it. You should not destroy the counterpart before 1 January 2015.’ We’re sharpening our scissors already!

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