A provisional licence costs £34 online or £43 by post, and it is the only document you need before your first driving lesson. You can apply from 15 years and 9 months and drive a car from 17. The online form takes about fifteen minutes if you have your National Insurance number and your last three addresses in front of you.
A provisional licence is the only thing standing between you and a first driving lesson. Not a theory pass, not a car of your own, not insurance. Get this one document and you can legally sit behind the wheel of a dual-control car with an approved instructor the same week it arrives.
The online form takes about fifteen minutes if you have the right things in front of you, and most of the delay people experience is caused by starting it without them. What follows is the whole process in order, including the two parts that reliably stall an application: proving who you are, and working out whether a health condition needs declaring.
What It Costs
A first provisional licence costs £34 when you apply online or £43 by post. There is no discount, no concession and no third route.
| Route | Cost | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| Online | £34 | DVLA service on gov.uk, paid by card. Licence usually arrives within a week. |
| By post | £43 | Form D1 from a Post Office, sent with your identity documents. |
Source: DVLA, Apply for your first provisional driving licence. Correct at 1 September 2026.
The £9 difference is not the main reason to apply online. The postal route means putting your passport in an envelope and waiting for it to come back, and it takes longer at every stage. Use the post only if you genuinely cannot verify your identity digitally.
Whether You Are Old Enough Yet
You can apply from 15 years and 9 months. You can drive a car on the road from your 17th birthday, not a day before.
Those two ages exist so that the paperwork can be finished before the birthday rather than after it. A licence applied for at 15 years and 9 months simply sits in a drawer until you are 17, and nothing about it expires or lapses in the meantime.
There is no advantage to waiting and no penalty for applying early. The full set of age rules, including the narrow cases where 16 is the relevant age, is in when you can start driving lessons.
What To Have In Front Of You
Gather these before you open the form. The service will not save a half-finished application indefinitely, and hunting for a National Insurance number halfway through is how a fifteen-minute job becomes an evening.
- Proof of identity. A valid UK biometric passport is the easiest, because the online service can check it without you posting anything. Other documents are accepted, and the DVLA lists what counts as identification.
- Your National Insurance number, if you have one. It is on a payslip, a P60, or in the HMRC app.
- Every address you have lived at for the last three years. All of them, with rough dates. This is the field that catches out students, anyone who has moved between shared flats, and anyone who spent a year abroad.
- A card to pay with.
- A recent passport-style photo, unless you are using a UK passport, in which case the DVLA can take the photo and signature from it.
You also have to have been given permission to live in Great Britain for at least 185 days. That is a residency condition rather than a nationality one, and it is the reason the address history is asked for in the first place.
The Application, Step By Step
- Go to the DVLA service on gov.uk and sign in, or create sign-in details if you have never used it.
- Prove your identity when prompted. With a UK passport this is usually done on screen.
- Enter your name, date of birth and National Insurance number.
- Enter your address history for the last three years.
- Answer the health questions honestly. More on these below.
- Confirm you can read a number plate at 20 metres.
- Pay the £34.
You will get a reference number. Keep it. If the licence has not arrived after a fortnight, that number is what you need to track the application.
The Eyesight Standard
You must be able to read a number plate from 20 metres, which is roughly the length of five parked cars. Glasses or contact lenses are fine, and if you need them to reach the standard you must wear them every time you drive.
Nobody tests this when you apply. You tick a box. It is tested for real at the start of your practical driving test, on a parked car in the test centre car park, and this is where treating it as a formality becomes expensive.
Fail the number plate read and the test ends immediately, it counts as an attempt, and the DVLA is told, which can mean your provisional entitlement is revoked until you pass an eyesight test at a test centre.
If you have not had your eyes checked in the last two years, get them checked before you book lessons rather than before you book the test. An optician appointment is free for under-16s and for full-time students under 19, and cheap otherwise. It is the single easiest thing to sort out on this list and the one most often left.
Medical Conditions You Have To Declare
The DVLA needs to know about conditions that can affect driving. The list is long and not obvious: it covers epilepsy and other seizure conditions, diabetes treated with insulin, certain heart conditions, sleep apnoea, some visual field conditions, and a range of neurological and psychiatric diagnoses. It also covers some conditions people would never think to mention, which is why guessing is the wrong approach.
Look your condition up on the DVLA's A to Z of health conditions and driving and follow whatever that entry says. Most entries end with "you do not need to tell DVLA", and the ones that do not usually lead to a short questionnaire rather than a refusal.
Two things are worth being blunt about. Declaring a condition very rarely stops you driving. Failing to declare one that affects your driving carries a fine of up to £1,000, and if you are involved in a collision afterwards you can be prosecuted. The asymmetry is enormous and it runs in one direction, so declare.
If the DVLA needs more information
A declared condition can add time to the application while the DVLA writes to your GP or consultant, or asks you to have an assessment. That is normal and it is not a rejection. It is also a reason to apply early rather than three weeks before you hoped to start lessons.
What Delays An Application
Most applications go through without incident. The ones that do not usually stall for one of a small number of reasons, and all of them are avoidable if you know about them beforehand.
- A gap in the address history. A year at university, six months abroad, or a period sofa-surfing between tenancies. The DVLA needs the whole three years accounted for, and vague entries generate a letter rather than a licence.
- A name that does not match your identity document. If you have married, changed your name by deed poll, or your passport carries a different spelling, sort that out first. The DVLA has to be able to match you to the document you are using.
- An identity check that cannot be done online. Without a UK biometric passport you may be asked to post original documents, which adds weeks. This is the main practical argument for having a passport before you apply.
- A declared medical condition that needs following up. Normal, not a rejection, but it can add a month or more while the DVLA writes to a GP or consultant.
- A photo that does not meet the standard. Only relevant if you are supplying one rather than reusing a passport image. Plain background, no glasses glare, no smiling.
None of these are fatal and none of them cost you the fee. What they cost is calendar time, which is why the age rules give you three months of runway before your seventeenth birthday and why using that runway is worth doing.
What Happens Next
An online application usually produces a licence within about a week, and longer if the DVLA has checks to make. When the green photocard arrives, check the details on it. A misspelled name or a wrong date of birth has to be corrected before your practical test, because the examiner checks the licence against the booking.
The licence has a photocard number and a driver number. The driver number is the long one, and you will need it to book both tests, so photograph the card and keep the picture somewhere you can find it.
When To Book Your First Lesson
Once the card is in your hand, nothing else is required. You do not need a theory pass to start lessons, you do not need your own car, and you are covered by the instructor's insurance in a dual-control car.
Your instructor will ask to see the physical licence at the start of the first lesson, so keep it somewhere you will not lose it. A checklist of what else to bring is in what to bring to your first driving lesson.
The sensible order from here is lessons and theory revision running in parallel, not one after the other. You cannot book a practical test without a theory pass, and a theory certificate is only valid for two years, so starting the revision at the same time as the lessons keeps both clocks in step.
There is more on the sequencing in how to book your theory test, and the whole process end to end is set out in the complete guide to learning to drive in East London.
If you already know you want to learn in an automatic, that decision does not change anything about the application. The provisional licence is the same document either way. It is only when you pass that the two diverge, and the trade-off is covered on the automatic lessons page.
Once the licence is in your hand there is nothing else to arrange. Beginner lessons are £37 an hour in an automatic, and the instructor comes to you.
Start the beginner courseQuestions about the application
How long does a provisional licence take to arrive?
Usually within about a week if you applied online, and longer by post or if the DVLA has to make additional checks such as following up a declared medical condition. If nothing has arrived after two weeks, use the reference number from your application to track it on gov.uk.
Can I start driving lessons before my licence arrives?
No. Your instructor is required to see the physical provisional licence before you drive, so the card has to be in your hand. You can book a lesson for a date after you expect it, but do not book one for the same week you applied.
Do I need to pass the theory test before I apply for a provisional?
No, it is the other way round. You need a provisional licence before you can book the theory test, and you need a theory pass before you can book the practical. The provisional comes first in every case.
What if I do not have a National Insurance number?
You can still apply. The field is there because the DVLA uses it to verify your identity where it can, and the application handles the case where you do not have one. Do not invent or guess a number.
Does a provisional licence expire?
The photocard has an expiry date printed on it, usually ten years from issue, and it has to be renewed at that point like any photocard. The entitlement itself does not lapse because you have not used it, so applying at 15 years and 9 months and starting lessons at 17 costs you nothing.
I wear glasses. Does that affect my application?
Not in itself. If you meet the 20 metre standard with your glasses or lenses on, you meet it. What you must then do is wear them every time you drive, including at the start of your practical test when the examiner asks you to read a number plate.
The licence usually lands within a week of applying online. That is the point at which a first lesson stops being a plan and becomes a date in the diary.
Start the beginner courseMore in Getting started
Published 1 September 2026. Prices and DVSA figures are checked when this page is revised. If anything here has changed, ring us and we will confirm it.