Take the correct documents on your theory test in Peterborough, the test centre is just here . You will need to take both parts of your provisional licence.
It is incredibly easy to forget this detail, because most of the time, if any person has cause to ask you to confirm your age, showing them the plastic card of your provisional licence will normally be good enough i/d for them. But not so when you take your theory or practical tests! You MUST take the plastic card as well as the paper form. One of the reasons for this is to do with fraud. There are fake documents around (you might spot a member of staff flashing over a ultra-violet light above the documents) and also, when you are asked to sign the forms presented to you, not only will the member of staff be able to check your photo i/d, but they will check to see the signatures match up.
Should you be asked for your driving licence by a Police Officer, then the same rule applies, they simply will not accept seeing one of the 2 documents. Most people are understandably quite reluctant to leave both parts of their driving licence in a bag or the glove box of the car for safety reasons, in case of theft, and the Police do recognise this as being a legitimate reason, hence the fact they give you 7 days to take both of them to a Police Station.
Recently, one of my pupils made the mistake of taking just the plastic card to a theory test in Peterborough and the staff very kindly extended the test time to an hour later to accommodate a quick dash home to retrieve the paper part of the licence – may have cost £14 in a taxi there and back but proved to be worthwhile as the result was a pass! Better to have paid the taxi ride than lose the £31 test fee. (By the way, I think the understanding from the staff that day was pretty exceptional, whilst it was very kind of them, I don’t think you would be able to insist on that level of generosity).
While I’m on the subject of test fees, a customer recently called me for some driving training prior to his practical test that he had booked up online, paying £87. When I pointed out that the fee is actually £62, he was adamant that he had been charged £87. I rather suspect that he had perhaps used the services of a third party organisation that had booked up the test on his behalf, after he gave them all of his details. Apart from the obvious security issue here (your driving licence details are personal to you), there really is no need to be paying any organisation £25 for doing a task that is quite straight forward. I have blogged before on how to book your tests, but in any case the link is here. As you will see, there is no need to pay more than the £62 test fee when booking up your test.
