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| Hi - I have a question that I hope hasn't already been covered (I have checked most of the thread but it is LONG!).
I have been here for almost 12 mths now and so need to surrender my UK license for a Swiss one. However.....we plan to stay out here 2-3 years max and I travel frequently back to the UK and keep my old car there still. If I have surrendered my UK licence will this invalidate it and thus render my UK car insurance invalid??
My husband has changed his licence already - however has 2 paper licences (he lost it a few years back so requested a copy and then found the original) so has surrendered the original paper one and kept the copy. He has suggested I do the same but I really don't think this will work? 
Has anyone any ideas / thoughts? Does anyone reading this also keep a car in the UK, if so how do they insure it? 
Many thanks | |
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Your UK insurance is probably already invalid on the grounds that you are no longer a UK resident, home address no longer valid, etc - there's usually a requirement to inform them of changes of material facts like these. Perhaps a family member could insure the car for you, and have you added as an additional driver? Not sure if they ask the residency of additional drivers, but that might work.
Your husband's double licence trick doesn't work either, as you've no doubt worked out - when he did the swap, his UK licence would have been returned to the DVLA and cancelled. If he got stopped in the UK and tried to show his cancelled UK licence, it would show up as no longer valid, and it would therefore be the same infringement as driving without a valid licence. His Swiss licence is of course fine, assuming insurance is ok for whatever car he's driving.
If you've got a UK licence with additional categories - large vans, trailers, etc - then doing a basic swap will only put cars (Cat B, I think) on your Swiss licence (the other categories here are considered professional and require a medical). Once they've been removed, it's debatable whether you'd get them back upon returning to the UK as they are no longer issued as standard but are subject to additional driving tests. If this matters to you, then make sure you get them transferred onto your Swiss licence - it's quite easy, you need a basic medical from your doc (costs about 120 CHFs) and a sort of equivalent to a CRB check (order online, get in post a few days later), as well as the usual eye test. I wrote a big post about this further up the thread; searching key terms and 'kodokan' should dredge it up; it was about Jan 2010.
Good luck with it.