Thousands of motorists are at risk of being fined up to £1,000 because they are unwittingly driving without a valid licence.

They risk prosecution after failing to spot the extremely small print on their photocard licence which says it automatically expires after 10 years and has to be renewed - even though drivers are licensed to drive until the age of 70. The fiasco has come to light a decade after the first batch of photo licences was issued in July 1998, just as they start to expire.

Motoring organisations blamed the Government for the fiasco and said 'most' drivers believed their licences were for life.
A mock-up driving licence from 1998 when the photocards were launched shows the imminent expiry date as item '4b' They said officials had failed to publicise sufficiently the fact that new-style licences - unlike the old paper ones - expire after a set period and have to be renewed.

To rub salt into wounds, drivers will have to pay £17.50 to renew their card - a charge which critics have condemned as a 'stealth tax' and which will earn the Treasury an estimated £437million over 25 years. Official DVLA figures reveal that while 16,136 expired this summer, so far only 11,566 drivers have renewed, leaving 4,570 outstanding. With another 300,000 photocard licences due to expire over the coming year, experts fear the number of invalid licences will soar, putting thousands more drivers in breach of the law and at risk of a fine.

At the heart of the confusion is the small print on the tiny credit-card-size photo licence, which is used in conjunction with the paper version.

4b: The small print on the back of the driving licence is easy to miss
Just below the driver name on the front of the photocard licence is a series of dates and details - each one numbered.
Number 4b features a date in tiny writing, but no explicit explanation as to what it means.
The date's significance is only explained if the driver turns over the card and reads the key on the back which states that '4b' means 'licence valid to'.

Even more confusingly, an adjacent table on the rear of the card sets out how long the driver is registered to hold a licence - that is until his or her 70th birthday. A total of 25million new-style licences have been issued but - motoring experts say - drivers were never sufficiently warned they would expire after 10 years.

The DVLA said failure to update the photocard after 10 years fell into the same category as failing to inform them of a change of address.

CHECK YOUR LICENCE EXPIRY DATE!!!