Asked by: Jonathan Davies (Labour - Mid Derbyshire)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, whether her Department has considered potential options to support people whose theory tests have expired while waiting for availability for practical tests.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
It is important that road safety knowledge and hazard perception skills are up to date at the critical point a person drives unsupervised for the first time.
The maximum duration of two years between passing the theory test and a subsequent practical test is in place to ensure that customers’ road safety knowledge and ability to identify developing hazards is current. This validity period is set in legislation, and the Government has no current plans to lay further legislation to extend it.
Ensuring learner drivers have current relevant knowledge and skills is a vital part of the learning to drive process as casualties on our roads are disproportionately new drivers. Learners therefore need to pass another theory test if their two-year theory test certificate expires.
Asked by: Jonathan Davies (Labour - Mid Derbyshire)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is taking to remind motorists when their vehicle tax is due for renewal.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency sends renewal reminders around three weeks in advance of expiry to remind and encourage vehicle keepers to renew their Vehicle Excise Duty on time.
Vehicle keepers who have a Driver and Vehicles Account can also choose to receive email or text reminders. These are issued up to 21 days in advance of the Vehicle Excise Duty expiring. If the vehicle is not relicensed further emails or texts are sent seven days before expiry, on the day of expiry, and one day after expiry.
Asked by: Jonathan Davies (Labour - Mid Derbyshire)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps she is taking to reduce waiting times for the return of medically suspended driving licences.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) aims to make a licensing decision within 90 working days in 90% of cases where a medical condition(s) must be investigated before a licence can be issued. During this financial year the average time to make a licensing decision in such cases is 44 working days.
The DVLA’s online services are the quickest way to apply for a driving licence and drivers with diabetes, epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, visual impairments, sleep conditions, or heart conditions can apply online. However, the DVLA is very often reliant on receiving information from third parties, including doctors, other healthcare professionals or the applicant themselves, before a decision can be made on whether to issue a driving licence. To help with this, the DVLA has introduced a simplified licence renewal process for drivers with glaucoma and some mental health conditions. This has significantly reduced the need for the DVLA to seek further information from medical professionals and enabled more licensing decisions to be made based on the information provided by the driver. The DVLA will consider including more medical conditions in this simplified process, as well as adding more medical conditions to its online channels.