Recommendation 2

The DVLA’s communication during the pandemic was ineffective, leaving many customers feeling as if their applications were making no progress. Customers had huge difficulty contacting the DVLA’s call centre during the pandemic to enquire about the progress of applications. Between April 2020 and March 2022, due to a surge in calls, around 60 million calls to the DVLA about driving licences went unanswered, 94% of the total it received. The number of calls it did answer fell by more than half, from over four million in 2019–20 alone, to 3.4 million over the two years from April 2020 to March 2022. Some of our constituents told us that when they did speak to the DVLA they found its response unhelpful, causing frustration and additional stress. Many DVLA customers went to their MPs for help: the number of complaints about the DVLA received via MPs increased tenfold between 2019–20 and 2021–22. Although most people affected by the backlogs were able to continue driving under an exemption in the Road Traffic Act 1988, this was not clear to many people. The DVLA says that it has recently modernised its telephony systems, so it should be able to cope better with future surges in demand. Recommendations: a) The DVLA should improve its communication to ensure customers understand the status of their applications and are updated regularly. This should include the information that they may be able to continue to drive while they wait for their application to be processed. b) The DVLA should also improve how it communicates this and other important information to stakeholders such as MPs. It should set out what it is doing to improve its communication in its Treasury Minute response to this report. 6 Driving licence backlogs at the DVLA