The powered two-wheeler is the backbone of urban food and parcel delivery - and the licensing behind it is the least understood corner of the driving-licence system. Riders, and the platforms and fleets that engage them, regularly get the basics wrong: what CBT is, how long it lasts, what a car licence does and does not confer. Here is the structure, from the official guidance.
To ride on public roads you need two things before anything else: a provisional licence, and compulsory basic training - CBT - which produces a certificate. CBT is exactly what it says: basic training, compulsory, a day with an instructor rather than a test to fail. After CBT, riders on L-plates can ride on the road within the limits of their entitlement. The full licence route then requires passing the theory test and both parts of the practical test - and the practical parts must be passed within 2 years of the theory test, or the process starts again.
CBT itself expires. Once you have done your CBT you have 2 years to pass your theory and motorcycle tests, or you must do CBT again. The delivery industry runs on riders who did CBT at 17 and never progressed - which is legal while they renew it, and instantly illegal the day it lapses. A rider working on an expired CBT is riding without a valid licence, with the insurance catastrophe that implies.
Mopeds can be ridden from 16, with the right entitlement. The category ladder: AM covers the small 2- and 3-wheeled vehicles up to 45km/h; A1 covers light motorbikes up to 125cc and 11kW. The rules differ for people who already hold a car licence, and older entitlements work differently again for anyone licensed before 19 January 2013 - the licence itself, checked online, is the only definitive answer for a given rider.
You must wear a helmet that meets safety standards when riding a motorcycle or moped on the road. Not should: must. For employers and platforms, the helmet rule is one of the few non-negotiables that can be verified at a glance.
A rider using their own vehicle for delivery work needs the vehicle legal in its own right: valid V5C registration, taxed, MOTed where required - and adequate motor insurance. That last word carries the weight: the insurance must cover the use the vehicle is actually put to, and delivery riding is a class of use that standard policies routinely exclude.
Trike rules changed: provisional car and motorcycle licences now only cover motor tricycles for physically disabled drivers. Non-disabled riders need the right provisional entitlement and CBT - though anyone over 21 with a full car licence can ride a motor tricycle of any power rating, with the full A1 or A licence required beyond the corresponding power limits for tested riders.
Riders arriving with a full EU licence face one more gate before CBT: they must either exchange the licence for a GB one or register it with DVLA first - and if they register, they must exchange it after passing theory and practical. For fleets recruiting internationally, that sequencing question belongs in the onboarding checklist alongside the right to work check, not discovered when the rider tries to book training.
Delivery platforms and fleets alike tend to treat insurance as the rider’s private affair. It is, legally - until the uninsured rider has a collision on your delivery, at which point it becomes everyone’s affair. The single most useful verification a fleet can run is asking to see that the policy covers food or parcel delivery use, because the gap between “insured to ride” and “insured to deliver” is where the industry’s worst claims live.
The moped sits in a regulatory blind spot: it is cheap enough to buy casually, slow enough to feel harmless, and regulated exactly like a motorcycle. Riders assume the car licence “covers it”; recruiters assume the rider knows; and the CBT certificate expires quietly in a drawer while the shifts roll on. Each assumption is individually understandable and collectively produces a delivery fleet riding on borrowed legality. The fixes cost almost nothing - a licence check, a CBT expiry diary, an insurance question - which is why there is no good excuse for the industry’s record on it.