Row grows over DM
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• If you have had your licence revoked because of an old illness from which you have long since recovered, CM wants to hear about it. Contact features editor Mary Williams on 081-652 3678.
• An owner-driver who had his driving licence revoked by the Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency, only to have it reinstated four months later, has won legal costs against the DVLA (CM 27 Feb-4 Mar).
Peter Nickell, of Newton Abbott, Devon, won 21,000 at a magistrates court hearing last week. He is now considering tak
ing action against the DVLA fur Loss of earnings.
Nickell is one of many victims of a get-tough policy by the DVLA's medical advisory board, which is clamping down on those it deems not healthy enough to hold a licence.
But the DVLA says that it will issue warnings before revoking any licences and it claims that it is relaxing its criteria for revoking licences on medical grounds.
Following our report on Nickell's case other drivers have been talking about problems with the DVLA.
El Dennis Hooper, 48, has been a PCV driver all his working life, most recently for Blagdon Lioness Coaches in Blagdon, Avon. He had his licence revoked last November because he had suffered from epi leptic fits which started in 195 when he was seven, but encle when he was 12. He has no taken medication for epileps since then and is appealin against the decision this wee at Weston-super-Mare magistra tes court.
LI Peter Lawson, a Basildor based owner-driver, lost his 1: cence in 1964 because he had fit following a road accident. H got his licence back in 1967 an has been healthy ever since – but it was taken away again thi March. Lawson says he i perfectly healthy and "cannc understand why I failed". He i awaiting an appeal date.