Older Drivers Now Pay Doctors £62.50 Just to Keep Their Licence

Doctors are now charging patients up to £62.50 to fill in a single DVLA medical form, after the first change to the official fee benchmark in 14 years pushed practice prices sharply higher. For drivers over 70 declaring a health condition, or lorry and bus drivers renewing a Group 2 licence, the paperwork that keeps them legally on the road now comes with a bill that did not exist at this level a year ago.

A 56 percent jump agreed behind closed doors

The British Medical Association and the DVLA struck a new deal on the fees paid for driving licence medical questionnaires, ending a rate that had stood unchanged for 14 years. Under the agreement, the harmonised rate for GPs and consultants completing the standard DVLA medical questionnaire rose to £50 from 1 January 2026, then to £62.50 from 1 April. The previous rate was £40 for GPs and £42 for consultants, a figure fixed back in 2012 and never reviewed until now.

BMA professional fees committee chair Rob Barnett said the old rate was “no longer economic” and had fallen badly behind inflation over 14 years. Future rises are now locked in too: from April 2027 and 2028, the fee will rise again in line with the consumer price index, capped at 5 percent a year, with a review promised if inflation runs hotter than that.

The £62.50 figure applies to the fee the DVLA itself pays a doctor when it directly commissions a report under Section 88 of the Road Traffic Act, usually when the agency is reviewing a driver’s fitness after a medical condition has been flagged. But it has a knock-on effect that patients feel directly in their pocket.

Why patients end up paying, not the DVLA

Completing a DVLA medical form at a patient’s own request, rather than at the DVLA’s direct instruction, counts as non-NHS work. GP surgeries are entitled to set their own charge for this, and the BMA publishes the DVLA rate as a reference point that many practices use to set their private fee scale. When that reference rate jumps 56 percent, practices tend to follow it upward, and some charge considerably more than £62.50 once admin time and appointment costs are added.

Patients affected include drivers renewing their licence from age 70, anyone declaring a new medical condition such as diabetes, epilepsy or a heart problem, and professional drivers needing a Group 2 medical exam using the D4 form for a lorry or bus licence. None of this work falls under an NHS GP contract, so there is no fee cap and no requirement for a practice to charge the DVLA’s benchmark rate rather than its own higher figure.

Rob Barnett’s justification for the increase was that the fee needed to “cover the cost of provision and procurement of service as well as reward for effort, skill and responsibility.” That argument makes sense from a GP surgery’s perspective. From a patient’s perspective, it means a piece of paperwork required simply to keep driving legally now costs more than a full tank of petrol for many family cars.

Group 2 drivers face the biggest hit

The increase lands hardest on professional drivers. Lorry and bus drivers must renew their Group 2 medical every five years from age 45, and annually from age 65, using the D4 medical examination report. Each of those renewals now needs a doctor’s signature at the new higher rate, on top of any charge the driver’s own optician levies for an eyesight test, and on top of lost working time attending the appointment.

For an owner-driver or agency HGV driver already squeezed by rising insurance and fuel costs, a fee that rose 56 percent in a single year adds a real cost to staying qualified for work. Haulage industry bodies have separately warned that the cost of getting and keeping an HGV licence has climbed sharply in recent years, and the medical fee rise adds another line to that bill.

What you can do about it

Drivers facing a DVLA medical form do have some room to reduce the cost. Practices are allowed to set their own fee, so prices vary between surgeries in the same town, and shopping around a nearby practice or a private GP service before booking can save money. Some surgeries publish a fixed non-NHS fee list on their website or noticeboard, and asking for this in writing before the appointment avoids a surprise on the day.

If a practice charges considerably more than the £62.50 benchmark, raising it with the practice manager is worth doing. Fees for this kind of non-NHS work are meant to reflect a reasonable charge for the time and skill involved, not an open-ended figure set without explanation. Patients who believe they have been charged unfairly can also raise a complaint with the practice directly, or query it with their local Integrated Care Board.

Anyone who has a medical condition that could affect their driving is legally required to tell the DVLA regardless of the cost of the paperwork involved. Failing to declare a notifiable condition can result in a fine of up to £1,000, and can invalidate insurance if an accident happens while the condition was undeclared. The full list of conditions that must be reported, along with guidance on the process, sits on the gov.uk website, and drivers can check whether a report needs to come from a GP or can be completed as a self-declaration first.

For those who need a doctor’s report, it is worth asking the surgery to submit the form quickly after the appointment rather than leaving it in a pile of admin work. The BMA has separately encouraged members to return completed forms to the DVLA within four to six weeks, given the agency’s own well-documented backlog in processing medical reviews once they arrive.

The £14 test that many drivers put off

Doctors are not the only cost in this process. A standard eyesight test at an optician typically runs from £25 to £30, and some drivers renewing a Group 2 medical need additional checks such as a field of vision assessment, which can add a further charge. Stack a £62.50 GP fee, an eye test, and a morning off work for an owner-driver, and the true cost of a routine medical declaration can climb past £100 before a single mile has been driven.

None of this is optional for drivers who fall into a reportable category. The DVLA’s own guidance lists dozens of conditions that must be declared, ranging from diabetes treated with insulin to sleep apnoea, epilepsy, stroke, and a wide range of heart and eye conditions. Anyone unsure whether their condition needs reporting can check the full list on gov.uk before booking an appointment, which avoids paying for a form that was never required in the first place.

A wider pattern in DVLA-linked costs

The medical fee rise lands on top of other increases drivers have faced this year. DVLA-related administrative costs have moved upward across several categories in 2026, and campaigners have pointed out that this kind of paperwork falls hardest on people who did nothing wrong beyond growing older or developing a manageable health condition. A driver with well-controlled diabetes who has never had an accident pays the same fee as anyone else the DVLA asks to be medically reviewed.

Doctors’ representatives argue the rise was overdue and reflects the real cost of the work involved, an argument that holds up when set against 14 years of a frozen rate. For the patient sitting in the waiting room with a form to fill in, though, the increase lands as a bill they did not have last year, for paperwork they cannot avoid if they want to keep their licence.

Sources:

• BMA: Fee rise for driving licence form filling
• BMA: Fees for driver licensing and the DVLA
• GOV.UK: Health conditions and driving