Posted: Monday, 02 May 2016
Last year, the DVLA announced plans to close its overnight licence checking system known as the Electronic Driver Entitlement Checking Service (EDECS) in favour of a real-time Access to Driver Data (ADD) system.
Although ADD has been live for several months now in order to ensure an easy and trouble-free switchover, EDECS officially closed at the start of April. Therefore, if your choice of third-party licence check provider isn't using ADD, you could run into problems verifying the entitlements, endorsements, and other driving details of employees.
ADD is an all-digital service that can provide results for frequent checks and single driving license requests in real-time. With its business-to-business interface, it is incredibly simple and straightforward to request information, which can improve efficiency for fleet operators.
In addition to issuing instant results after granting consent, ADD operates 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Therefore, you can rest assured that any pressing problems concerning your employees will be fulfilled in a prompt and professional manner.
ADD replaces the old EDECS, which was an overnight batch service where you had to wait until the day after sending a completed and signed D796 mandate form to receive a licence result. As you can expect, ADD has been welcomed with open arms by the fleet management world.
Even though the DVLA told third-party licence checking service providers about the switch from EDECS to ADD in good time and what they needed to do in preparation of the change, some organisations are seriously lagging behind and have left it too late to test their systems thoroughly.
In fact, the DVLA's own figures show that just 6.3 per cent of checks between April and December last year were made via the new system. So, along with failing to test the new service, certain providers may not be able to carry out robust checks on licences either, leaving some fleets exposed to the dangers of non-compliance.
Here at Fleet Licence Check, we have been using our direct and secure tunnel link to the DVLA's Access to Driver Data system for quite some time now. As a result, we are able to prove a real-time result and allow your drivers to provide consent electronically for their licence to be validated.