Driver CPC and tachograph cards: what employers must check

Hold a C or D category driver to the same standard as a van driver and you miss half the picture. Professional lorry, minibus and bus drivers need two more things beyond the licence — a Driver CPC and, in most of those vehicles, a tachograph driver card — and each expires on its own clock, independent of the licence itself.

Who needs what

Every "yes" is subject to the exemptions below — which attach to the operation, not the driver.

What Driver CPC is

The Driver Certificate of Professional Competence is the qualification for driving lorries over 3.5 tonnes and passenger vehicles with nine or more seats professionally. The licence category proves someone can drive the vehicle; the CPC is what makes driving it for a living legal.

New vocational drivers sit an initial qualification on top of the driving test. Drivers who already held the vocational category when CPC arrived (September 2008 for buses, September 2009 for lorries) have acquired rights and skipped the initial test — but the periodic training below applies to them in full.

The 35-hours-in-5-years rule

Keeping a CPC means 35 hours of approved periodic training every five years, recorded by the training provider against the driver. Since December 2024 it comes in two forms: National Driver CPC (driving in Great Britain only, with more flexible courses including e-learning) and International Driver CPC (the traditional 7-hour-course format, required for EU work). Completing the hours resets the five years.

The failure mode fleets actually hit is not drivers refusing training — it is 35 hours discovered still outstanding a month before the deadline. Five years of runway makes it nobody's urgent problem until it is.

The DQC card

Proof of a current CPC is the Driver Qualification Card (DQC), issued by DVSA when the initial qualification or the 35 hours complete. A driver must carry it whenever driving professionally in scope: not carrying the card is a £50 fixed penalty, while driving professionally with no valid CPC at all risks a fine of up to £1,000 — and the offence of causing or permitting that driving reaches the employer, exactly as it does for the licence itself.

Tachograph driver cards

Vehicles in scope of the drivers' hours rules — goods vehicles over 3.5 tonnes including any trailer, and passenger vehicles with nine or more seats — must record driving time, breaks and rest on a tachograph. All but the oldest vehicles carry digital or smart tachographs, and those record onto a driver card: a DVLA-issued smart card (£32, valid five years) personal to the driver.

Driving an in-scope vehicle with a digital tachograph and no valid driver card is an offence in itself, whatever the licence and CPC say. Renewal is not automatic — DVLA advises applying at least 15 working days before expiry. And since 1 July 2026 the net is wider: vans between 2.5 and 3.5 tonnes on international hire-or-reward journeys into the EU are in scope too.

The exemptions employers actually meet

• The under-30% rule. Driving a vehicle carrying material or equipment the driver uses in the course of their own work — the builder taking the 7.5-tonner to their own site — is exempt from CPC, provided driving is not their main job and takes less than 30% of rolling monthly working time. Both halves must hold, and the 30% is measured continuously, not per week.
• Section 19 and 22 permits. Minibuses run on a not-for-profit basis by charities and community groups under a Transport Act 1985 permit sit outside CPC, and most such operations are outside the tachograph rules as well.

Relying on an exemption is a decision worth writing down: who decided, on what basis, and when it gets reviewed. If the operation changes shape — the driving creeps over 30%, the community minibus starts taking paying passengers — the exemption evaporates without anyone sending a letter.

What expiry actually does

A lapsed CPC is recovered by completing 35 hours of periodic training — the initial qualification never has to be re-sat. A lapsed tacho card is a fresh DVLA application. The trap in both is a licence check that comes back clean: status valid, categories present, no new points — and the driver still cannot lawfully do their job.

What employers should check

1. Which roles are in scope — professional driving in C or D categories, minus documented exemptions.
2. DQC expiry, and progress toward the next 35 hours — spread over five years, not crammed into the final quarter.
3. Tacho card expiry — with the 15-working-day lead time built into the reminder.
4. On every check, not once at hiring — CPC and card status move on their own schedule between licence checks.

Neither appears on the free GOV.UK check-code view: CPC and tachograph data come back only through DVLA's commercial interface, and only when asked for. DV Check requests both wherever a driver's assigned role demands them, treats an expired or missing CPC or card as do-not-drive for that role, and records a marked exemption instead where one genuinely applies.

Frequently asked

Does a van driver need a Driver CPC?

No — CPC starts where category B ends, so vans up to 3.5 tonnes are out of scope however commercial the work. But watch the trailer: a van-and-trailer combination over 3.5 tonnes used for hire or reward can bring the tachograph rules into play even though CPC still doesn't apply.

Does an expired CPC invalidate the driving licence?

No. The licence, its categories and its status are unaffected — which is precisely the danger. The driver remains fully licensed for private driving and out-of-scope work, and a routine licence check shows nothing wrong.

Do drivers with acquired rights ever need training?

Yes. Acquired rights only excused the initial qualification for drivers who held vocational categories before 2008/09. The 35-hours-in-5-years periodic training applies to them exactly as it does to a driver who qualified last year.