Trailers: Driving Licences

(asked on 24th January 2022) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what assessment his Department made of the potential risk to road safety prior to the decision in September 2021 to cease the requirement to take the B+E test to tow a trailer or caravan with a car.


Answered by
Trudy Harrison Portrait
Trudy Harrison
This question was answered on 27th January 2022

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) takes its commitment to road safety extremely seriously and continues to work with the industry and stakeholders to drive forward the importance of safe driving and safe towing.

The Heavy Goods Vehicle (HGV) driver shortage has been well documented and is an issue that is affecting people and businesses throughout the world. The Government has acted decisively to help address the HGV driver shortage and announced a range of measures to help the industry recover from the pandemic. A public consultation exercise was launched to seek views on changes to the HGV driving test. The proposal to remove the requirement for car drivers to take a B+E test if they want to tow a trailer was subject to that public consultation. The consultation received over 9,500 responses and most respondents supported the proposals. The DVSA has analysed the responses and published a summary of the public feedback on these proposals on GOV.UK

The car and trailer licence changes announced on 10 September 2021 have now been approved by Parliament and came into force on 16 December 2021.

All car drivers wishing to tow a trailer or caravan for leisure or business are still encouraged to undertake voluntary training through an accreditation scheme, which is being developed with the trailer industry and training providers.

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