Driving licences - what's new, and what might change

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The fundamental rules on driving licences don’t change very often - arguably the last really major review was implemented back in 1997, although there were some significant revisions in 2013. We did have an important change affecting leisure vehicles in 2021, however, when all GB drivers with a car licence (category B) were granted category BE too, whether or not they already had it. If you passed your car test before 1997, you always had this entitlement but, more recently, you had to pass an additional test to get it. BE allows you to drive heavier towed combinations, which is handy for those with larger caravans or who want to tow something behind a motorhome. The exact rules now are:

If you passed a car driving test before 1 January 1997, you're generally entitled to drive a vehicle and trailer combination up to 8,250kg maximum authorised mass (MAM). This applies throughout GB and Northern Ireland.
If you passed a car driving test from 1 January 1997 onwards, you can tow a trailer that weighs up to 3,500kg MAM. This applies to holders of licences issued in GB, but NOT in Northern Ireland.
If your licence was issued in Northern Ireland, and you passed a car test on or after 1 January 1997, you’re limited to vehicles up to 3,500kgs maximum authorised mass towing a trailer up to 750kgs. Or a vehicle and trailer combination up to 3,500kgs MAM, providing the MAM of the trailer doesn’t exceed the unladen mass of the towing vehicle. So at the time of writing if you want to drive a heavier combination (MAM above 3,500kg, trailer above 750kg) on a Northern Irish licence, then unfortunately, you will still need to pass the additional BE test.

So what else might change with these rules? Well, it’s possible that the rules for Northern Ireland might be changed to bring them into alignment with the rest of the UK once again, but there’s no indication yet of when or if that will happen.

Before the 2024 General Election, plans were in hand to renew a small derogation (a temporary allowance to deviate from what the law says) on how large a vehicle you could drive on a category B licence, if the vehicle were powered by electricity or hydrogen. This used to mean an increase to 4,250kg (instead of 3,500kg) but it was limited to goods vehicles only and didn’t allow for trailer towing. The Club was involved in negotiation with the Department for Transport to revise this to include all vehicles (i.e. to include motorhomes) and to include trailer towing. We expect this derogation to be put in place at some point soon, but its relevance to our sector is still limited, because it only applies in Great Britain (not in Northern Ireland or outside the UK). So of limited use to those of us who are driving larger vehicles, but it may act as further encouragement to sell alternatively-fuelled vans into the GB market. This will hopefully then help the development of that sector, which should benefit the motorhome sector in the longer term.

Keeping watch on the EU review

Although our licence rules are no longer tied to those in the EU, it's worth keeping an eye on developments with EU legislation, as changes there may be reflected in our own laws, either to maintain broad compatibility with our neighbours, or just because the same arguments for change apply to us too. The EU is currently carrying out a review of its licensing rules and one of the biggest changes being proposed is an uplift to the ‘B’ licence from 3,500kg to 4,250kg. Similar to the derogation above, this change is proposed to allow for the extra weight of, particularly, battery vehicles. For many vans and van-derived vehicles like ambulances and motorhomes, it’s hard to accommodate a heavy battery pack and still offer full payload capacity within the existing 3,500kg weight limit. Requiring drivers to pass another test to drive these relatively small vehicles is problematic, but it seems likely that this change will be passed in the EU. Currently there’s no proposal to make the same change in the UK, but there must be a reasonable chance it will happen in due course, perhaps within the next 2-3 years. This would be a permanent change, so would make the need for the above derogation unnecessary and we would expect it to apply across the UK. It would help encourage the development and sale of vehicles with alternatives to diesel power, which is necessary to meet the Government’s climate change targets.

Currently, if you want to drive a larger motorhome (MAM above 3,500kg), you need either a C1 licence (up to 7,500kg) or a C licence (over 7,500kg). Once again, those who passed their car test before 1997 are fortunate, as they were given C1 entitlement automatically - others have to pass an extra test. The Department for Transport asked for views last year on whether C1 entitlement should be given automatically on passing your category B car test, as was the case prior to 1997. Most respondents supported this (as did the Club in our response). Whether this will turn into a formal proposal, however, is now hard to say as the subsequent change in Government may mean a change in priorities on this kind of issue. We’ll have to wait and see on this one.

Increasingly automatic

On a related issue, the number of new car licensees who take an automatic-only test is rising - for 2022-23 around 1 in 5 category B tests were in automatics, up from about 1 in 20 a decade ago. That certainly reflects trends in new car sales. While hybrids and electric vehicles are all automatic (or at least drive as if they are, as EVs technically have no gears to change), even new conventional cars are steadily becoming harder to find with manual gearboxes. For the first time as far as we can remember, none of the cars entered for the Club’s Towcar of the Year competition this year were manuals. There’s nothing wrong with an automatic tow car, or indeed an automatic motorhome or campervan, but it is a little concerning that a generation is coming through where being able to drive a manual can no longer generally be assumed, especially if they want to buy a secondhand motorhome in the future. The presumption that the ‘default’ car driving licence is a manual one will perhaps need to be reconsidered at some stage, but any change which meant you could drive a manual vehicle without being trained and tested on one would be difficult to argue for.

There are many other aspects of driving licence rules which Club members need to be aware of, which we will cover in a future blog.

Published September 2024