Purpose
This Advisory updates operators on Minister Wood’s announcement this morning that driver licences, Warrants of Fitness (WoFs), Certificates of Fitness (CoFs), vehicle licences (‘regos’) and licence endorsements that expired on or after 21 July 2021 will be valid until 30 November 2021. We will provide the actual notice as soon as it is available.
Comment from Nick Leggett
Since we went into Level 4 lockdown on 18 August, the Road Transport Forum (RTF) has been asking the Government to address the situation of expiring Certificates of Fitness (CoF) and driver licences which could take essential workers – truck drivers and their trucks – off the road at a time when they are most needed.
Despite claims from the insurance sector that they would provide written evidence to give operators an assurance that neither of these matters would be an issue in the event of a claim, that assurance never came and I am pleased and grateful to the Minister to see this issue be formally addressed and it will be a relief to operators.
While the whole country was at Alert Level 4, we understand that about 1,000 CoFs were expiring each day, so this has affected several thousand vehicles. We are mindful that Waka Kotahi NZ Transport Agency has faced ongoing challenges with providing a level of CoF inspection availability to minimise delays and downtime and we would like to acknowledge the inspection agents have been operating under duress as well not openly due to COVID-19 but also due to staff shortages and the prohibition on importing immigrant inspector capacity. Therefore, we urge operators to start planning now to schedule those inspections.
We are also mindful that we do not know how long the lockdown in Auckland will last, so this problem will be ongoing for vehicles in that area. We are working with officials to proactively manage these remaining risks.
