Since 2015, drivers from a majority of the UK nations were introduced to a new driving licence format. The two components of a licence in Northern Ireland, the plastic photocard and the printed equivalent, remain unchanged. However, old paper licences are no longer issued to drivers in England, Scotland and Wales, and plastic, credit card-sized photocards have become the norm.
A great many Britons rely on their driving licence as their primary identification, so it might be more likely than not that you’re extremely familiar with the front side of your licence. We all know that it’ll have our full name, date of birth, the licence expiry date, some seemingly random combination of numbers and letters and our home address. But glance all the way to the bottom of your licence, and you’ll find another set of number and letter combinations separated by forward-slashes (/). Do you know what those mean?
As you might have guessed, the seemingly random combination of characters on Section 9 of your driving licence actually relates to driving licence codes in the UK. But what do they mean, really? We’ve got you covered with our comprehensive guide to UK driving licence codes, so you know exactly what your licence says!
In essence, the driving codes you’ll find on your licence relate to the type of vehicle you’re legally allowed to drive. At the same time, it also reflects any medical condition that you’ve declared to DVLA.
But how does the DVLA do this? Well, if you remember, when you first applied for a provisional licence, you were required to complete a medical questionnaire and list any conditions that could prevent you from safely operating a motor vehicle. The DVLA uses this data, along with category-specific requirements, to generate the codes that appear on the back of your driver’s licence.
For example, the 02 number appears on a driver’s licence if the holder has indicated a need for a communication or hearing aid. If you’re an organ donor and have notified the DVLA, you’ll get a different special code on your licence. These digits will appear on the farthest right column, where the left would be letters signifying what type of vehicle you can drive.
It is easy to miss the fine print on our driver’s licences, let alone the alphabet soup of numbers and letters that fills the table on the back of our photo cards. But don’t worry! Cracking the encryption on the back of a UK driver’s licence is a lot less difficult than it seems.
Here’s a quick overview of what the different sections at the back of your licence mean:
Column 9 lists the type of vehicles that you are allowed to drive
Column 10 shows the earliest date from which a driving category is valid
Column 11 shows the date at which your driving category is no longer valid
Column 12 show what restrictions are in place on you as a driver
While all these columns are important, we’ll be focusing mainly on sections 9 and 12 of the licence in this article. Read on to learn more about what the letters mean within Section 9!
You can only drive certain types of automobiles with certain licences. It’s possible to get a licence that lets you drive multiple types of vehicles since some of them do overlap. Also, the minimum age for obtaining certain licences is higher than for others. For instance, you can get a licence for certain types of vehicles as early as 16, while others have stricter age requirements.
Like we said before, it’s not hard to decipher what the different categories on the back of your licence mean, especially because Section 9 also features a small icon of the vehicle that relates to the character combination. Here’s a quick run-down of the four main categories that you’ll come across behind your driving licence:
Category A — Relates to motorcycles, including mopeds and tricycles
Category B — Showcases the ability to drive 4-wheeled light vehicles (like cars!)
Category C — Means medium– to large–sized vehicles such as lorries or trucks
Category D — Only relates to buses (minibuses included!)
Any Category + E — Allows drivers to drive with a trailer attached to the vehicle
Easy, right? Now, let’s take a look at what each of these categories means on an individual level in the next section.
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