If that scheme goes ahead, those ten-year licences would be renewable on the driver’s birthdate rather than the end of the tenth year, to avoid lengthy queues and piles of applications having to be dealt with at parish halls.Outdated computer equipment at the Driver and Vehicle Standards Department will be replaced with a system compatible with the production of credit card style licences complete with photographs of the driver, similar to those in the UK.Paper licences issued recently for a five-year period will be valid for that time but all new licences issued – probably from about June of this year – will be in the new credit card style.The UK is following a recent EU directive that driving licences should last for a ten-year period.Everyone there, including those whose licences were originally issued to last until they were aged 70, will now have to reapply for a new licence every ten years, with a current photograph to be attached.Home Affairs Committee president Senator Wendy Kinnard said that Jersey had the same driving licence categories as the rest of Europe.’It makes sense for us to introduce a similar system and we urge the Constables to agree for us to follow suit,’ she said.The Constables Committee recently rejected the suggestion that the Island adopt a ten-year driving licence system but that was before they knew of the EU directive to do so, which the UK would be following.St Martin Constable John Germain said that at that time, the committee felt there was insufficient information about the implications of the proposed system.The Constables believed that the current system, in which money from licences was divided by parishes over a five-year period to pay for by-road upkeep, was working very well, he said.
‘We thought it was a shame to alter a system which works well, but following the EU directive we are prepared to re-examine the issue,’ he said.
