Driver's licence conversion - Australian to UK - Germany

I have read this somewhere but cant remember where!!!

I beleive that if i have an australian D.Licence and an address in England i can get my Aussie one
Transferred to a UK one which in effect is valid in Germany!
Does anyone know where i can get the forms in England? what is the goverment department called??

thanx

rob

And sorry if this has been written before - can someone direct me int he right direction?

cheers

It's the DVLA Link here

Look under Driver Information for "Driving in GB as a new resident" and just follow the links from then on.

HTH.

You are supposed to be resident in the UK to do this, I have thought about doing this also, but after further investigation I think it's harder than it looks

You get the form from the post office in the UK.
I did it while I was still in the UK. I think its possible to do from Germany. You just need friend in the UK who you trust and is willing to help with postage etc, and be willing to be without your passport for a couple of weeks.

You need a UK address in order to get a UK driving licence.

A question: Does the new credit-card style one still carry the holder's address?

My licence is still the pink paper one and has my old UK address.
I applied to the DVLA to change it, but they refused, saying that even though it was a UK licence and I was from the UK, they would not issue a new licence to a non-UK address.
It is also against the (UK) law to have a licence with a false address in the UK.

This causes a dliemma; I asked here in Germany and they said that I may exchange it for a German one, but I don't have to.

So, I guess if you have access to a UK address, you can try to get it changed and then changed again here. But I doubt it will be such an easy process.
MT

When you were resident in the UK?
If you send in your passport, they will check and see if you have a residency permit for the UK, and clearly they'll see a Germish one and then fingers crossed, they'll just send it back and not charge you with fraud as they are going hard nuts on illegal licence dealings.

I lived in the UK for 4 years using a Aussie licence, but changed it about a year ago, just before moving to Germany after reading all the advice on this website.

I'm not sure how much they look at your passport. I thought it was more for the purpose of identification rather then checking your visa. I guess its something to be wary of.

Remember its British public servants you are dealing with, not German ones. They probably couldn't be arsed to do anything beyond looking at the front page.

I read that they are upping the controls on this as they have a big problem with fraud. If anyone has successfully done this from Germany please post here as I would defo take this option if it was viable. Can't really be fucked with studying and doing my tests again

Did it last year - no problems (though I used my Aunt/Uncles address and they did the hard yards for me). Basically they collected the application and sent it to me. I sent them cash and the filled out application back by reg. post and they the sent the licence back to me. It helped that I had a Brit passport - they do ask however on what date you came to the UK.

I have the new pink credit card style and yes it does state the UK address.

Regarding the passport issue - if you have a Brit one then you just fill out the electronic number or something (I beleive it also just for ID) but I did use a date that I did go to the UK for a wedding.

That situation is completely different from a non EU national. Anyone here from outside the EU successfully do this??

I did this when I was in the UK (although I was living there). However, I didn't have to send my passport anywhere, and I'm surprised that they will allow you to do that because I was under the impression that passports are not meant to be sent by mail.

Basically the passport part is just to prove your identity. So what I had to do was go to the post office, fill out the form and then show that form and my passport to a post office employee. They checked that I was the person on the passport, and then stamped/signed a certain section. Then this form and my old drivers license was sent. In a few weeks, I got a British one.

I also don't know the situation with a non EU passport, but this is how it worked for me. If you actually fly over there and do this in person, I think it would all work out no problems.

i think ill give it a go.
thanks to all ill let you know how it goes

They will use your passport to determine your residency status, as far as they told me.
The basic rule for license conversion, whether you are EU or non-EU, are that you are normally resident in the UK, and have a permanent address. Note that the first point doesn't preclude you if you have a german visa in your passport, they will just check for evidence that you appear to be resident in the UK normally. I have both a german visa, plus a UK ancestry visa, and they said, when I asked via email, that this was enough. Since there are no exit stamps from the UK, it will be hard for them to tell anyway.
The new license can be sent back to Germany, rather than your "permanent" UK address, but this must be specified in a cover letter along with your application form.

The majority of the above you can gather from the DVLA website. One point which I haven't been able to correlate with the website was the fact that I was told that, since I don't have an EU passport, I could not do this at a post office or over the counter at a DVLA centre, and I could only send it in either from here or in the UK; so if that's the case, either way your passport is in the mail, which is always a nervous moment.

a mate of ours from aussie did this a few months ago

Righto, I'm doin it!