UK driving licence due to expire

My husband did this a few years ago - the local ACI office told him what documents were needed, and made an appointment for a medical check with the doctor who has a weekly session at their office. He failed the eye test and had to get driving glasses and return with the glasses and their prescription, then after a few weeks, the Italian licence arrived in the post. By law, you can drive on your UK licence until its expiry date (rather than having to change it after a year's residence in Italy as before), but if you are living in Italy at expiry time, you are then required to change it to an Italian licence.

As long as you have a UK address through which you can be contacted I would stick to a UK licence - it is perfectly legal to do so as long as you have one of the modern licences with photocard and EU logo. You cannot have a foreign address on a UK licence. Friends, living full time in Italy but with UK licences managed to avoid speeding points as it is not yet possible to put points on a foreign licence! Also, if you ever want to hire a car in UK, or perhaps elsewhere, we used to find that the cost was far higher if we claimed to be Italian rather than British, in some instances the hire car charge was literally double! Finally, I think you have to have a medical every so often with an Italian licence, can't remember all the details but there was another fairly recent post concerning driving licences and with each renewal and medical there were the inevitable fees involved.

Hi Sprostoni, I am in the same position as you. I had my UK licence "Italianised" a couple of years ago.  I did it through a driving school in Communanza. The chap there said to come back about 3 months before it was due to expire and he would arrange for the process to issue a new, Italian licence, as I cannot renew the UK one. I do have diabetes so obviously I will require a medical on that front. It was funny, because when I told him I had diabetes, he said that there were no diabetic Italian drivers around!!!!  Weird!   I can give you his details if you wish. A few other people have used him as well for things relating to re-registering.