Print

[LN11AAB498A]

But you passed post-1976 I think you said?
Is there anywhere that holds a record of the actual date of my pass in 1966?

Hi Clifford, I passed my test in 1973 and the day/month/year are on the back of my licence. That date is written against the following entitlements - B- B1- BE - C1 - C1E - D1 - D1E (& FKINPQ what ever that is) and the date I passed my HGV test.

Its puzzling why your licence doesn't have that same info 

[22900013A]

I'll ask again... IF you tow a trailer that is heavier than the new entitlement, will you be driving without a licence ... and therefore not be insured?

I suspect that the ULW of a Series is less (or could be contrived to be less) than 30cwt, so would not be allowed to tow an unbraked trailer with a MGW of15cwt

602

I don't understand your point here, you will be allowed to tow a trailer upto 3500kg gross without having to take a test. It is upto you to then determine what your vehicle is allowed to tow. For a series it is 500kg unbraked, 2000kg on overrun brakes, then 3500kg or 4000kg with coupled brakes. The last two are irrelevant anyway as nobody has coupled brakes.

The weights will be in the owners handbook of the specific vehicle. There is no "formula" for you to calculate it, some small cars cannot tow anything, for everything else it really does vary. More modern vehicles list the GTW on the VIN plate, but you still have to find out the thresholds for the various braking requirements.
Of course if you just tow whatever you fancy without complying with the manufacturers specs you could be driving illegally and therefore uninsured.

[LN11AAB498A]

I wonder what those who used to frown on Eastern European drivers and hint that their testing standards were not as good as ours will say when the first "new batch" driver reverses into something expensive...

I agree, and from my experience, working for an HGV driver agency, European drivers, that is non-UK drivers, are just as good or as bad as UK drivers e.g. one left the haulage yard in said lorry only to return minutes later asking the owner "how to make it go faster", poor chap didn't know how to move the gears up from low to high range by flicking a switch on the side of the gear stick  He probably got his licence on the cheap from some bloke in a pub.

[Clifford Pope]

Hi Clifford, I passed my test in 1973 and the day/month/year are on the back of my licence. That date is written against the following entitlements - B- B1- BE - C1 - C1E - D1 - D1E (& FKINPQ what ever that is) and the date I passed my HGV test.

Its puzzling why your licence doesn't have that same info

My old licence was replaced by the paper pink licence on 14 April 1976, and it says "valid from 14 4 1976".
The replacement photocard licence says "valid from 18 2 76", as does its recent over 70 licence replacement.

I've never given any thought to the non-mention of when I actually passed the test, assuming that would be held somewhere by the DVLA central records, and had nothing to do with the date of issue of any of the later replacement licences. Obviously I'd have thought a licence can't be retrospectively valid from before its issue date.
It's only just struck me as odd that it seems there is no way of checking the date of passing the test - it must mean that numerous insurance companies dating back 50 years have taken my word for it without checking, as well as organisations using it for identity checking.

[vod80]

I forget the exact name for it - I think it’s called the check code service and this should give you the dates when you gained all your entitlements.

I had to do it for the exchange of my UK licence into the French version as I wanted to keep my trailer and light HGV privileges…

Quite interesting reading!

[Old Hywel]

I’ve heard that a Cycling Proficiency Test can now be upgraded to HGV entitlement.

[Genem]

I’ve heard that a Cycling Proficiency Test can now be upgraded to HGV entitlement.

I'm tempted to make a comment about screeching U-Turns but that would stray into Politics...

 

[Wittsend]

Good news then - I'm there ahead of the queue .... 





 

[Clifford Pope]

I forget the exact name for it - I think it’s called the check code service and this should give you the dates when you gained all your entitlements.

I've just used that service. (License Check Code service)  It says all my entitlements are valid from 2019, which is when I renewed at age 70.

No mention of when I qualified for those entitlements, nor of when I passed my test.

[Clifford Pope]

I've just tried getting a code, to see if that gives more information.
Under cars, it just says valid from "before 18 February 1976".

[Clifford Pope]

Further update to my enquiry from DVLA: They hold no records before 1976, so it is not possible to discover the date when I passed the driving test, nor the date when I added any other additional categories before 1976.

It appears therefore that I am free to invent any date I like, and no one can prove it wrong.  :)

In those days it was received advice that one needed 1 hour of tuition per year of one's age, so my parents bought me 17 BSM driving lessons as a 17th birthday present and I duly passed. No other practice was deemed necessary - indeed it was advised that tuition by a parent say who quite possibly had never passed a test themselves was likely to be confusing and counterproductive.

[w3526602]

How can I find that out - or have the DVLA lost all the pre-computerisation information?

Hi,

To the best of my knowledge (I started at DVLC in 1972), we did not receive any history when a driver moved over to the computer system. You just sent in your old licence, an application form, and the fee. The Driver System went LIVE, I think, in 1974.

The Vehicle System went live maybe a couple of years later, but initially, you dealt with your Local Office, and they sent everything to DVLC.

I say to the best of my knowledge ... I was aware of most things that were going on, including many ad hoc decisions, such as dumping thousands of "notification of sale" cards, and I personally helped my team dispose of tons of the old green log books. (I personally returned some very interesting log-books back to the owners, paying for the stamps myself. Probably a "disciplinary offence" if caught).

Some of our older readers may remember their Local Office cancelling their grubby old VE60 (I think), and returning it with a nice new copy. It was only later that I realised it was so the DVLC Data Input clerks could key the data onto paper tape, at 13,000 keystrokes per hour (allowed 1 error per 1000 key strokes. Every document was keyed twice, and the results compared).

One of my girls could maintain 36,000ks per hour, with NO errors, which was embarrassing. She spent too long walking to her manager's desk to collect fresh work ... which was logged by the clever keyboard. The solution was to allow her to collect three batches of work at a time.

I devised a system that allowed me to see at a glance how often any one of my girls had visited the ladies room, how long she had spent there, and who she had met while there. Similarly with days off sick. I didn't implement either ... my girls under enough stress as it was.

All verbal warnings were recorded on personal files.  I received one such warning (in the RAF it would have been a commendation). I'd put myself in an "iffy" situation, to prevent all of DVLA coming to a standstill, by climbing into the paternoster system). The sealed envelope travelled with me when I moved to a new branch. My new boss handed it to me, unopened, said he didn't want to see it.

602

DVLA's "avowed intent" was to collect taxes, and help fight vehicle crime. Any help given to enthusiasts would be from the goodness of somebody's heart.