Getting French licence but keeping UK one

[Andrew Gordon]

Does anyone know if there is a way of obtaining a French licence but keeping my UK one?

[fittersmate]

Not legally no. ANTS check up with the DVLA before issuing a french licence and you have to surrender the UK licence to them.

Even if you get a replacement UK licence for a "lost" one and only use one of them to send to ANTS, using the the spare licence in the UK may drop you in the brown stuff, because the DVLA computer records, which have your licence details down as swapped for a french licence on their computer, can be accessed at any time by a traffic copper.

[BritinBretagne]

Why would you want to? Your vehicle classes will be transferred to the French one.

[mint]

Now I'm confused!  Don't we always get adverts on this very site offering driving licenses, passports, university degrees, etc?[6]

[idun]

I keep wondering about people's licenses if they have a UK photo licence. They have to be renewed every 10 years, so what does a french resident do?

In theory they are valid until the age of 70, but surely NOT if they expire in the mean time.

I ended up with two licences. Due to a move from our french city rented appt, to our house, I could not find my UK licence, a non photo licence and applied for a new one to be sent to my parents home. I used the new one to get my french licence, as I transferred it in my early days in France a couple or so years after moving there.

Found the missing one a few years later, it had slipped between other paper work and so I ended up with two, never thought about sending it back. Just one of those things.

[mint]

I have a story similar to yours, id.  I had to renew my passport at about the same time as my license  whilst I was still living in the uk.

When my new passport came, I somehow managed to throw it in the bin (at least that's what I concluded I'd done with it!)

In sheer panic, I wrote to the passport office and said my old passport was "lost in the post by the DVLA"!  Yes, I know, lying through my teeth but, as you know, I wasn't born in the UK and I didn't want a lot of hassle being called up to wherever and questioned.

So all I needed to do was to get new photos and pay the fee again.  I could have justified my status because I had other means of proving my right to live in the UK but I didn't want the complications.

Even now and under similar circumstances, I'd do the same again.  It was just to avoid the bureaucracy, not that I wasn't "legal".

[sid]

When your new licence is issued the accompanying letter says:

"Ce permis de conduire est maintenant le seul qui vous autorise à conduire. S'il remplace un ancien permis, cet ancien titre est maintenant invalide et vous devez le détruire. En cas de conduite avec un titre invalide, vous vous exposez à des poursuites".

[idun]

I am not so sure that it said that all those years ago when I exchanged mine...... and my old licence hasn't got a photo on it either. No idea if that would in any way be valid.

When I exchanged from french to UK licence when we moved back, I used my french licence to do it. AND I am pretty sure that some things on my french licence were not transferred.

[sid]

Possibly not, as exchanges used to be done at the Prefecture and you just got your new licence and the old one was taken off you (unless it had been lost), and now it's all done online and sent by post. However, it has always been the case that you may not have more than one licence; anyone who has another and knowingly uses the superseded one is breaking the law; it's an international agreement.

[idun]

I have never used my old uk licence since I found it again and will not give it up either, like me it's a bit of a relic now.