Sussex wrote:
Down here, and I would imagine every other place working in the 21st century, you submit your application with all the stuff required for that application to be passed, and you are giving the license at that time.
This is always the case for vehicles, and usually for drivers, unless further info is required for driver's licenses.
Well there are pros and cons, I suppose, but at least we don't have to worry about the kind of DBS logjams and cock ups you have down south.
I recall that when the council introduced the new plates c.2000 I asked a council official why the licence date was used on the plates rather than the vehicle test date, but she just said that that was what they'd decided, so that was that.
So I suspect they were more bothered about taxis running round with invalid expired plates (our previous plates weren't dated at all, and could last the life of the car - I'm sure I had my first plate for about eight years
) than untested cars - as I said, if the car fails the council test, the plate would be removed anyway.
But of course the deterrence against properly expired plates is undermined by the fact that even when a cab is legitimately licensed the plate can still be out of date by a month or two because of the renewal process.
And back then drivers were phoning the council to complain about other drivers with out-of-date plates, until the system settled down and everyone realised that the way the system worked meant that the plates would often be out of date, so now people in the trade generally ignore it.
But just goes to show how little attention members of the public pay to stuff like this - if they did then no doubt the council would be contacted regularly about out-of-date plates, but I'm not aware that that's a thing, although I'd be very surprised if it's *never* happened.