Changing your address on the V5C and your licence

Two records, not one

The driving licence record is about you. It carries your name, your address, your entitlements and any endorsements, and it is the record a police officer checks against your identity.

The vehicle register is about the car. The V5C log book names the registered keeper and the address that keeper is at, and it is the record every automated system uses to find the person responsible for a vehicle.

Updating one does not update the other. They are held by the same agency but they are separate registers with separate processes, and this is the single most common misunderstanding about moving house with a car.

• Driving licence: free, updated online, a new photocard arrives by post.
• V5C log book: free, updated online or by post, a new log book arrives.
• Doing one does not do the other.

How to change each one

The driving licence is changed online through GOV.UK with your existing licence number, your national insurance number and your addresses for the last three years. There is no fee, the entitlements and any endorsements carry across unchanged, and the expiry date does not move.

The log book is changed by updating section 3 of the V5C and sending it to DVLA, or online where the vehicle is eligible. There is no fee for a change of address, and a new log book arrives showing the new details.

Neither change alters anything else about the record. A new licence photocard does not reset the ten year photograph clock and a new log book does not change the number of previous keepers or the date of first registration.

What goes wrong when the log book is out of date

Everything automated about a vehicle is sent to the registered keeper at the address on the record. A tax reminder, a clean air zone penalty, a parking notice and a notice of intended prosecution all go there and nowhere else.

A notice that reaches an old address is still validly served in most cases, and the consequence is that a deadline passes while you know nothing about it. That is how a small charge becomes a large penalty and how a section 172 request becomes a six point endorsement for failing to name the driver.

The other failure is the tax reminder. Vehicle tax renewal notices go to the registered keeper's address, and a keeper who does not receive one is still liable for the vehicle being untaxed. The automated enforcement system does not care whether the reminder arrived.

• Tax reminders, penalty notices and prosecution notices all go to the log book address.
• A notice served on an old address is usually still valid.
• Missing a section 172 request is a worse offence than the one it was asking about.

The legal duty, and the fine

There is a duty to notify DVLA of a change of name or address on a driving licence, under section 99 of the Road Traffic Act 1988. There is a parallel duty on the registered keeper to notify a change of particulars for a vehicle under the registration and licensing regulations.

Both carry a fine of up to one thousand pounds. In practice a prosecution for an out of date address alone is rare, and the real cost is the notices that arrive somewhere else.

There is no grace period written into either duty. The obligation is to notify, and the sensible reading is to do it as soon as you have moved rather than when you get round to it.

What else to update at the same time

Insurance is the urgent one and it is not a DVLA matter. A policy rated on an old postcode may not respond properly to a claim, and the premium itself is postcode driven, so leaving it is both a risk and often an unnecessary expense.

Any vehicle on a retention document for a private plate carries an address too, and a retention certificate sent to an old address is a private plate you may struggle to recover.

If you have a trailer registered, a vocational entitlement, or a vehicle taxed in the disabled class, each of those records carries its own address and its own notification route. None of them is updated by changing the licence.

Selling or buying around a move

Update the log book address before you sell rather than after. The new keeper section has to be completed accurately, and a seller whose own details are wrong on the document creates a record that is difficult to unpick later.

If you buy a car while moving, use the address you will actually be at when the log book arrives. The new keeper slip is proof of nothing about the address, and a log book sent to a house you have left is a replacement application and a fee.

Where a vehicle is on finance, tell the finance company as well. They are the legal owner until the agreement ends, and their correspondence follows their own record rather than the DVLA one.