Recommendation 3

The DVLA’s efforts to encourage customers who can use online services to do so are not sufficient. Some customers need the option of applying for a driving licence using a paper form, but the DVLA assesses that around 60% of customers who apply on paper could have applied online. In the periods during the pandemic when customers who applied on paper experienced substantial delays, almost all customers without notifiable medical conditions who applied online had their applications processed within three working days. The DVLA rightly wants to avoid disenfranchising people unable to use online services, and its aim is to “create digital services so good people choose to use them” while keeping a paper option available. However, we believe there is considerable scope for improving take-up of DVLA’s online services and we do not agree with the Department’s approach of not setting the DVLA any targets for digitisation and digital take-up of driving licence services. Recommendations: a) The Department and the DVLA should consider what more they can do to increase take-up of the DVLA’s online services: • They should understand better why some customers have chosen not to engage with online services. • They should incentivise customers to use digital services and discourage people who can apply online from sending paper applications. b) The Department should, in its Treasury Minute response to this report, set out its plans to hold the DVLA to account for increased take-up of online services.