Staff working at the Town Hall have experienced a large spike in applications, with 43 being received in January, 51 in February and 565 last month ahead
of the Easter school holidays.
Despite there currently being a 15-to-20-day turnaround period, some parishioners are submitting their forms on the day they are due to depart.
Darren Cleworth, customer services manager for St Helier, is now urging people to hand in their forms, which could become a legal requirement for driving in Europe, with plenty of time to spare.
‘If you know you are going on holiday in a month, and you put an application in now, great. If you know you are going on holiday in three months, and get it in now, then even better,’ he said.
‘At the moment, we are managing and we are pulling out all the stops to get the late ones done, but if numbers do continue to rise we are going to be at breaking point and my worry is that over the next six-week period sooner or later someone will miss out on a permit.’
Mr Cleworth added that each form took around six to eight minutes for his staff to process, and he expected the high number of applications to continue into the summer.
‘I do not expect this spike to abate yet, as people will soon be applying for one to go on their summer holidays, but hopefully after July or August things will start to
settle down,’ he said.
‘But for now, it is an ongoing significant admin process that we are really having to manage within the office.
‘We are very stretched for resources at the moment, but we are managing it.’
Mr Cleworth also added that he thought all of the Island’s parishes had been busy processing applications.
He said: ‘Some parishes only have one person and everyone seems to be saying the same thing. I have had two parish secretaries liken it to the bulk driving-licence renewal period when we had to process 30,000 applications. They have said that it is as busy, if not busier.’
Meanwhile, St Saviour Constable Sadie Le Sueur Rennard said that it had been an extremely busy time for her staff.
‘It has been absolute hell, to be honest. It has been very busy. We are having to cope with it. It is a job that has to be done, but one that we could have done without,’ she said.
Elsewhere, a spokesman for the parish of St Clement said that the administration was very busy but was managing to turn applications round in around one or two days.
More information on international driving permits is available online at parish.gov.je under the website’s ‘Licences’ tab.
The 1949 Geneva permit lasts for 12 months; the 1968 Vienna licence lasts for three years or until your regular driving licence expires, whichever comes first.
