Minibuses are the silent heroes of many a family holiday, community trips and house move. They are the perfect meeting of van and HGV and open up a huge realm of possibilities for those who drive them. They are available for easy hire at almost any vehicle hire facility and are one of the easier bigger vehicles to drive. But if you want to drive a minibus, there are some rules you need to know about.<\/p>\n
By the letter of the law, anyone who has a full UK driver\u2019s license, and has had it for longer than 2 years can drive a minibus. It\u2019s a pretty simple rule really. If you\u2019re not sure you can drive one, just check on the back of your license \u2013 there\u2019s a grid there that tells you exactly what you can and can\u2019t drive. But being able to hire and drive one is one thing \u2013 there are some other rules you need to follow, and they depend on the reason you\u2019re driving the vehicle.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re hiring and driving a minibus completely for free (aka, you\u2019re not taking any money for it at all), then you can hire one under your normal license, with no changes or special permits or licenses at all. But you do have to be over 21! You will also need to visit your GP and have them perform a group 2 medical check-up so that you can prove your fit and healthy enough to drive such a big vehicle safely. It\u2019s also your responsibility to make sure that the total weight of the minibus never exceeds 3.5 tonnes, and that you aren\u2019t towing a trailer at any point. If you\u2019re over 72 years old, there is another hoop you will need to jump through. You will need to take a more comprehensive medical exam, and you will need to fill in a D2 and a D4 application form<\/a>.<\/p>\n Of course, hiring and running a minibus isn\u2019t cheap. Even if you\u2019re doing it for a family member or a charity group, it\u2019s understandable that the driver wouldn\u2019t want to front the cost of it from their own pocket. This is why many people who hire minibuses often collect a small amount of money from those they are transporting to cover their costs. If you want to do this (and we completely understand if you do!), then you will need to apply for a permit. You can apply for this through the DVSA, as long as you are over 21. The conditions of the permit are quite strict \u2013 you can only transport the pre-specified group of people, you cannot have the bus open to the public, and you must be carrying between 9 and 15 passengers. Most of these are easy enough to follow, and you should be able to breeze through the process.<\/p>\n Finally, there are plenty of people who want to hire and drive a minibus for hire. To do this, you will need a professional license, to prove that you meet the required standards for safety and professionalism. The first thing you will need to do is get a provisional entitlement to drive a minibus, also known as a PCV (Passenger Carrying Vehicle) licence. Once you have that, you will also need a PSV (Public Service Vehicle) license, in order to service the public. In order to obtain both of these licenses, you will need to go through some professional training, undertake several hours of driving practice and pass a series of tests at the end. This is to ensure you are competent and safe to drive a minibus for professional purposes.<\/p>\n At Surrey and Hampshire HGV Training, we specialise in providing aspiring drivers in that last category achieve their dreams. Our trainers are experienced in training all categories of license to all abilities, so it doesn\u2019t matter whether you\u2019re a veteran driver or you\u2019re relatively new on the scene. For more information, or to book your first training session, please get in touch with us today.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Minibuses are the silent heroes of many a family holiday, community trips and house move. They are the perfect meeting of van and HGV and open up […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":13,"featured_media":2965,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2964","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news"],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-10-30 01:39:23","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surreyandhampshirehgvtraining.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surreyandhampshirehgvtraining.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surreyandhampshirehgvtraining.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surreyandhampshirehgvtraining.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/13"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surreyandhampshirehgvtraining.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2964"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.surreyandhampshirehgvtraining.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2964\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surreyandhampshirehgvtraining.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2965"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.surreyandhampshirehgvtraining.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2964"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surreyandhampshirehgvtraining.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2964"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.surreyandhampshirehgvtraining.co.uk\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2964"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}If You\u2019re Covering Costs<\/h3>\n
If You\u2019re Driving For Profit<\/h3>\n