The green badge is the ADI certificate, issued after the part 3 test is passed and the instructor has registered with DVSA. It goes on the passenger-side edge of the front windscreen whenever lessons are given. Registration runs for four years. Renewal costs £300, the same as the first badge, and a criminal records check has to be in place before the renewal application; a replacement badge costs £3 (fees as listed on gov.uk, checked September 2026). Registered ADIs also take at least one standards check every four years. DVSA states that a person can be prosecuted for using an invalid badge or one belonging to somebody else.
The pink badge is the trainee driving instructor licence. It lasts six months and costs £140 (gov.uk, checked September 2026). To qualify for one, the applicant must have passed the part 1 test within the last two years, have passed part 2, and have had at least 40 hours of training in giving driving instruction from a qualified ADI, of which at least 10 hours were in a car. It is displayed on the nearside edge of the front windscreen. A licence holder may charge for lessons and works only at the training establishment named on the licence. DVSA requires them to describe themselves as a trainee driving instructor, and pupils are given the establishment's contact details in place of the instructor's own.
Every trainee licence carries one of two conditions, chosen at application and fixed for the life of the licence. Either the sponsoring ADI supervises 20% of all lessons the trainee gives, with the record kept and returned to DVSA, or the trainee completes at least 20 hours of extra training within the first three months, at least 25% of it practical in-car training. The part 3 test allows three attempts, and each further attempt must be booked within two years of the part 1 pass. Five hours of extra training are required after a failed attempt before the next one, and also if no test has been booked within three months of the licence being issued. A third failure invalidates the licence and paid instruction has to stop immediately. A further licence is rarely granted.
A green badge expires four years out. A pink badge expires six months after it is issued. A school running trainees also holds the supervision or training evidence and keeps that instructor's work inside the establishment; a third part 3 failure ends that instructor's paid teaching the same day. DVSA invites reports of anyone charging for lessons without a green or pink badge.
If your school takes on trainees, badge type belongs in the instructor record with its own expiry date and its own reminder schedule: four years out for a green badge, six months for a pink one, with warnings early enough that a renewal or a part 3 booking can still be arranged. Check whether the diary can be closed to bookings beyond an instructor's licence end date, so nobody sells a block of ten lessons that runs past it. If you use the supervision condition, look for a way to mark individual lessons as supervised and to report supervised lessons against total lessons given, per trainee and per month, because the 20% figure has to come out of records. If you use the training condition, an hours log that separates in-car hours does the same job. Check what a trainee's public profile and the automated pupil emails display, since those have to carry the school's contact details, and check that pupils allocated to a trainee stay attached to the school account, so the handover is clean when that instructor qualifies, leaves, or reaches the end of the licence.
Rules and figures are taken from DVSA guidance on gov.uk (trainee driving instructor licence rules, managing an ADI registration, the ADI part 3 test and the ADI fees list) and were checked on 6 September 2026; DVSA sets these fees and conditions and revises them, so re-check before quoting a figure. This entry describes the licensing position and does not replace advice on an individual case.