Make sure you're up to speed with driving licence change

The driving licence 'counterpart' will no longer be a part of the driving licence in the UK from 8 June.

The Government has replaced the counterpart with an online system, which, if you choose to embrace it, is easy to use.

If you own a business you should be checking licences regularly. Larger businesses tend to have this in place and will simply adjust the process. Rapidly growing businesses and smaller businesses tend to lag behind.

Remember, nipping to the post office for some stamps is as much a business trip as your field sales team clocking up 30,000 miles a year, so you need to do this for everyone in the business at least once a year.

The process in three easy steps:

• Ask your employees to submit their information at this gov.uk site. They will need their driving licence number, National Insurance number and post code. This will allow them to see their own licence information.
• They view their own record and can select ''share your licence information' to generate a code, which they then pass to you along with their driving licence number. It is valid for 72 hours so time is of the essence.
• You can then access another gov.uk site to input the code and licence information to view the driver's elibility to drive which vehicle types and of course any endorsements. You can print and save this for your records.

Be tough and consider employees 'not getting round to it' as bad form. You need to see if they are legally able to drive.

The most likely outcome isn't that you'll find some staff who don't actually have a licence - although there are hundreds out there driving daily, but 'what if' you found a staff member with say nine points? Would you offer some training, maybe even a change of their role to prevent a ban altogether.

As well as a box ticking exercise this information could prove invaluable to your business. 

Get everyone in your organisation to submit the information you need to be satisifed they can drive on business.

This information will also be required when using daily rental cars, so you need to know where to go quickly for your 'code' to pass over the desk at the rental firm.

Robert Nugent
Anthony K. Associates Ltd
robert@anthonyk.co.uk