Understanding the D906 form
A driving record belongs to the driver. The DVLA will discuss yours with you, but it will not hand it to your employer because your employer asked — it needs the driver’s consent first, and the D906 is the document that records it.
If you have ever wondered why licence checking involves a step that has nothing to do with checking anything, this is it. The declaration is the permission. The check is what the permission allows.
What exactly is the D906 form?
Its full name is the D906/ADD driving licence information fair processing declaration. ADD stands for Access to Driver Data, which is the DVLA service that releases driving record information to an organisation that has the driver’s consent.
In practice it is the document by which a named driver authorises a named organisation to look at their driving record. Without one, there is no lawful check to run.
What the driving record contains
The record the declaration unlocks is more than a confirmation that a licence exists. It holds:
- Personal details as the DVLA holds them, including the address on the licence.
- Licence details, including issue and expiry dates.
- Vehicle categories the driver is entitled to drive, and the dates each entitlement runs between.
- Endorsements, with the offence code, the date and the penalty points attached.
- Disqualifications, current and past.
That is the thing an employer needs and cannot get from a photograph of a licence. Endorsements, points and disqualifications are recorded against the record, not printed on the card, and a card in a wallet does not change when its holder is convicted of something.
How long consent lasts
Three years. That is the single most useful fact about the D906 and the one most often missed, because nothing announces it.
A declaration signed today is good for three years of checks. During that time an employer can check on whatever cycle they operate — monthly, quarterly, annually, or driven by the driver’s points — without going back to the driver each time. On the day it expires, checks stop working.
That failure is quiet, which is the problem. Nothing breaks, the DVLA does not send a warning, and a fleet running annual checks can be two years into an expired declaration before one comes back refused and somebody works out why. It is worth knowing the expiry date of every declaration you hold, and being told before it arrives rather than after.
Signing it on a phone
The paper route is the one most people picture: print the form, get it in front of the driver, have it signed, scan it, file it somewhere, and remember where in three years. Historically most of the effort in licence checking went here, before a single record had been looked at.
The digital version does the same job in about a minute. The driver receives a link, confirms their own name, date of birth and licence number, signs on the screen and submits. Nothing is installed and they do not create an account. The signature is captured in the portal itself, and the authorisation is held on file for its full three years, so the same driver is not asked again.
Two things about that are better than they first appear. The driver is confirming their own details, so the licence number on file is the one they read off their own licence rather than one transcribed by somebody in an office. And the expiry becomes a date the system holds rather than a date a person is meant to remember.
Paper is still accepted. There are drivers without a usable smartphone, and depots where paper is simply how things are done, and a signed paper declaration is no less valid. It is the fallback now rather than the default.
What happens if a driver refuses
Nothing automatic, and that is the right answer. A driver is entitled to decline, and the DVLA will not release their record without consent.
What follows is an employment matter rather than a technical one. An employer that requires driving as part of a role is entitled to require evidence that the person can lawfully do it, and a refusal is a conversation to have rather than a system to override. What matters for record-keeping is that the refusal is visible: a driver who never responded to an invitation and a driver who was checked and came back clean should never look the same on a list.
Checks already run
An expired declaration does not retrospectively invalidate checks run while it was valid. The evidence from those checks stands, timestamped, showing what was asked and what came back on the day.
What an expiry stops is new checks. Renewing is the same one-minute exercise as the original: a new invitation, a new signature, another three years.
Getting your own driving record
This page is written for employers, but a good share of the people who arrive at it are drivers wanting to see their own record — for a legal matter, for an insurer, when applying for a licence in another country, or simply to check that the points they think they have are the points they actually have.
You do not need an employer, a declaration or a service like this one to do that. The DVLA lets you view your own driving licence record directly, free, and the current route and identification requirements are on GOV.UK. Go to the source rather than to a copy of it, including this one, because the process and the forms change.
The distinction worth holding on to is this. A licence check of the kind described on the rest of this site answers what is true about this driver today, for an organisation that has their consent. Your own driving record answers what has happened over time, for you. They are different questions, and they are not obtained the same way.
On LicenceCheck.org the authorisation is charged once every three years at £1.00, and the expiry is tracked rather than diarised. How the digital D906 works, or the whole price list.