Renewing UK Driving Licence

fidobsa wrote:

.... I have come to the conclusion that the only possible way to do it when out of UK is to get someone to go to my house in Scotland, pick up the reminder form and forward it to me. ...

I think you can renew it online. They use the same photograph as in your passport if you have an electronic passport.

It says you can only renew online if you are in UK. There is also a facility for ordering a renewal form but again no provision for posting it overseas.

fidobsa wrote:

The alternative is to get a Hungarian driving licence

Depends on your place of residence. If your place of residence is Hungary, you are actually "required" to do this by Hungarian law. That is, you need a Hungarian license. If you get stopped by the police, they may issue you a warning, and require you to present the Hungarian license at a later date. Better to do it now. And do it before it expires.

fidobsa wrote:

I have not got a clue how to go about that! Any advice much appreciated.

Not a EU citizen myself, but I would expect driving license swap is standard all over the EU now so, it should not require any testing of your driving skills. I had both a Swiss license and US license. The Swiss one they would swap, the US one they would not. Simply go down to the local government offices, there should be a sub office for auto licenses. Say you want to swap your UK for the HU one and they will process it and give you a new license (I also had to get a "physical" receipt from a doctor, so it was few back and forth between offices, but not that bad). There should even be a photo booth there for your new license picture.

fidobsa wrote:

It says you can only renew online if you are in UK. There is also a facility for ordering a renewal form but again no provision for posting it overseas.

Pfff....don't let that stop you. All those pointless "rules" are sent to try us.

If it was me, I'd just try it and see if it detects where you are. I bet it's not that clever. If they say anything just act totally dumb - using a friends PC at work, don't know nuffin' about it, Do'h.....

In any case, that kind of location software can easily get your actual location wrong.

Alternatives:

1) You can always get someone else in the UK to apply online for you.

2) Or you can get a VPN connection to the UK and fool them into thinking you are in the UK. I do this often.

3) Go back and do it there ( = waste of time).

The annoying part of it is, when I first got my full licence it was supposed to last until I was 70, now you have to renew it every 10 years

fidobsa wrote:

The annoying part of it is, when I first got my full licence it was supposed to last until I was 70, now you have to renew it every 10 years

Oh, tell me about it. New photo every 10 years.

Mind you it should get easier. I have to renew my passport every 5 years as it always fills up quickly (only had it 2 years and it's already half full and it was 48 pages). Therefore they should have an update to date photo every time now that they share them (well, no more than 5 years old).

Do it on line I did... also how do you (2) Or you can get a VPN connection to the UK and fool them into thinking you are in the UK.) ?? I have a hot spot shield on my computer which shows the ip addy as from anywhere for my protection (cough) but what is a VPN?

Like fluffy says who will no they dont check even too busy xx

Lesley&Yan wrote:

Do it on line I did... also how do you (2) Or you can get a VPN connection to the UK and fool them into thinking you are in the UK.) ?? I have a hot spot shield on my computer which shows the ip addy as from anywhere for my protection (cough) but what is a VPN?

Like fluffy says who will no they dont check even too busy xx

VPN = Virtual Private Network.

Go here and read the blurb: VPN.

I use that one but I'm not associated with that business.

VPNs use two protcols over IP, one is PPTP and the other L2TP (don't worry about the difference and details). It's good enough to use PPTP to fool Iplayer and 4oD at the moment  but you have to use L2TP to fool some other places. The PPTP provider seems to have been blacklisted for some sites but the opposition have not caught on to IP addresses the L2TP provider uses. It's only a matter of time before the BBC catches on. I find L2TP to be too slow for serious TV watching but it works fine for browsing. But the speed is sufficient on PPTP to watch nearly everything non-HD on BBC. It can timeout sometimes but during the day, I have no serious problems. I have 24 Mbps VDSL (higher speed than ADSL found more in the countryside) which helps.

What I do is activate the VPN, open a browser and use numerous web sites to check my apparent IP location - I always open a new browser to do a session with every site and I always start new sessions for each individual UK activity.

One thing you cannot do is use BitTorrent over the VPN which is fair enough I suppose. The provider is blocking it. It's no great obstacle though.

Re: them checking on the IP address, if they were really interested, they probably would record the IP addresses and then flag all the ones apparently coming from outside the country. And therefore work on exceptions arising. I think they think it sufficient to simply say you cannot do it and not do anything else. The manpower to chase anyone would be enormous and the return zero. What would be the actual point and what would be the sanction? After all, many companies use external (non-UK) IP addresses. I believe Orange mobile was notorious for using non-UK addresses on it's mobile Internet platform.