Speeding fine - licence problem

[roisin]

A friend was caught speeding last week: doing 41 in a 30 mph zone, so £70 fine plus points, or whatever it is. OK so far.

But she just realised that she's never informed DVLA that she moved out of her parent's house 5 yrs ago, so the address on her driving licence is wrong (and technically illegal).

So what should she do?

1. Pay the fine immediately, and apologise for her inaccurate licence and promise to sort it out asap.
2. Send her licence off to get changed, and hope to get it back before she has to pay the fine?
3. Pay the fine and say she can't find her licence, is applying for a new one, and will send it when she arrives?

I would go for (2) and then when the fine does come through - explain the problem to them, and have the points added after that. Can get into trouble or not changing address.

I have the forms to send mine and DH's off - keep forgetting. Moved here 4 months ago now.

If you ring up the fines people when the letter arrives, and say that you are going on hols soon (so need your license to hire a car), they should give you a 30 day extension. I had to do this for my boss on many an occasion! I've changed the address on my license lots of times (forces so always moving), and it often takes less than a week to come back.

When I needed my license back really urgently (to go on holiday) I rang DVLA a few days after i sent it off. I spoke to a really nice woman who found my application and sorted it straight away. Might be worth a go?

Thanks all.

Do her parents still live at that address?

Don't forget that if she still has an old paper licence she'll need to go through the whole faff of getting a photo done.

Roisin, the same thing happened to me, I got a fine and my paper licence was still in ex dh's address (from 3 years earlier). I sent it off, got it endorsed and they sent it back to me. I think I figured in the end that they were more interested in endorsing it and getting my cash than in doing me for an incorrect address and it turned out to be the case. Also, years ago I had to produce my documents for the police (can't remember why, don't think I'd done anything wrong) and they said 'do they still live there?' - I think this was my dad's address so years ago but the policeman said 'hmm,ok then, I'll let you get away with that' when I said he still did.

Thanks WWW, that's very helpful.

As long as she can still be contacted via that address she should be OK. Same happened to me and I told the Police that I moved around a lot and although that address wasn't my main home it was a place where I could always be contacted.
They were fine about it.

I phoned the DVLA about this very matter just recently for a friend (ahem).

Just send tell her to send off her license and they deal with it and will then send her the appropriate stuff to change the address. She won't get into trouble.