Unfortunately some idiot at the CAA used the word 'renew' for the 5-yearly licence
re-issue and this caused all the confusion....
One reason the CAA introduced the NPPL was to resolve the utterly pointless 5-yearly re-issue imposed under JAR-FCL. Interestingly, the flawed CAA Regulatory Impact Assessment (which led to early adoption of JAR-FCL requirements in the UK) alleged that maintaining a JAR-FCL PPL(A) would somehow be
cheaper than maintaining the old UK PPL had been..
The old UK PPL was a lifetime licence, as is the NPPL. But any Ratings included in these licences have to be valid, of course.
The utterly pointless LAPL proposed under EASA part-FCL would be the worst of all worlds. Not only would it kill off the 'Medical Declaration' system, which the CAA CMO agrees is an entirely safe system, but it would also need to be re-issued every 5 years (to keep the fat cats in EASA well paid)
and would include 'rolling validity' (x hours in the y months before the date of flight). 'Rolling validity' was originally included in the NPPL due to a CAA drafting error and it took us ages to get rid of it...
It seems that only political pressure to change Regulation 216/2008 will stop EASA fiddling with 'one size fits no-one' sub-ICAO pilot licensing....
