NZTA COVID-19 up-date – Temporary extensions for WoFs, CoFs, endorsements and more

The Minister of Transport’s recommendation to the COVID-19 Cabinet Committee to provide a temporary extension of driver licences, endorsements and vehicle certification documents was approved by Cabinet on Tuesday (7 April 2020) and comes into effect tomorrow (10 April 2020).

The expiry of licensing and vehicle documentation has been a hot topic from the general public and across industry since we entered Alert Level 4 on 26 March 2020. As many of you are aware, we have been working closely with Ministry of Transport to address this issue.

I am pleased to announce that the Minister of Transport’s recommendation to the COVID-19 Cabinet Committee to provide a temporary extension of driver licences, endorsements and vehicle certification documents was approved by Cabinet on Tuesday (7 April 2020) and comes into effect tomorrow (10 April 2020).

Summary of new legislative changes

To help smooth the transition back to compliance, the legislation change provides a temporary extension to the following expired documents:

• Warrants of Fitness (WoFs) and Certificates of Fitness (CoFs), driver licences, and vehicle certifications issued under the Vehicle Standards Compliance Rule that expired on or after 1 January 2020.
• endorsements (including drivers of passenger services and dangerous good endorsements held by some truck drivers) that expired on or after 1 March 2020.
• It also provides a temporary suspension of the requirement to have a current vehicle licence (rego), if the vehicle licence expired on or after 1 January 2020.

Once we start adjusting back to business as normal, the Transport Agency will set expiry dates for these documents, which could extend up until 10 October 2020. We will let you know as we set these dates and will ensure you have plenty of time to get your documents compliant.

For those vehicles currently being used as essential services, we encourage you to make use of the testing centres that are open as essential services themselves, to help your services keep running safely.

This does not apply to revoked or suspended documents, and the Transport Agency can continue to revoke or suspend for safety reasons during this period.

Exploring solutions to prevent a spike in demands on industry

About 600,000 WoFs and CoFs, 800,000 vehicle licences, 40,000 driver licences, and 12,500 endorsements are expected to expire between 24 March 2020 and 17 May 2020. Given these numbers and the concerns raised from across industry, we are conscious of the need to manage the potential spike in demand for vehicle inspections and driver licensing requests once we move out of Alert Level 4 into recovery.

I want to reassure you that we have been exploring a range of solutions with stakeholders across the sector – to manage these potential bottlenecks as New Zealanders look to get their documents back up-to-date. There are lots of options to consider, particularly since it is still uncertain what recovery will look like. We will keep you updated about possible solutions as we get a clearer picture of how things are likely to unfold.

Further information on the legislative changes

We have updated the frequently asked questions available on our website and will continue to update these.

The legislative changes can also be found on our website. Please feel free to share these links with your teams or industry members.

Questions can be sent to regulatorycovid19@nzta.govt.nz or get in touch with your contacts within Waka Kotahi’s Regulatory Services team.

We look forward to continuing to work closely with you during these unprecedented times.

Ngā mihi,
Kane Patena

NZTA General Manager, Regulatory Services