Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Recommendation 4
4
Accepted
The DVLA gave insufficient attention to those driving licence service areas, such as medical notifications...
Recommendation
The DVLA gave insufficient attention to those driving licence service areas, such as medical notifications and its call centre, where staffing challenges led to the most detrimental consequences for customers. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the DVLA prioritised services with the highest volumes of applications or where it believed processing delays would cause greater problems, such as its services related to vehicles, knowing that this would take resources away from its driving licence services. Both the DVLA and the Department knew the system for managing paper-based driving licence applications was susceptible to disruption because it relied on people being on site. At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic the DVLA sought to make paper driving licence services more resilient. It invested in new buildings and additional staff, made changes to the law to postpone driving licence renewals, and made more services available online, but these actions failed to prevent backlogs from building up and persisting for around two years. The DVLA also undertook work for other parts of government during the pandemic, such as printing vaccination invitation letters, which were of course very important tasks, but also diverted resources from DVLA’s core services. It told us this work used spare capacity in its printing and mailing facilities. Recommendations: a) The DVLA should write to us within six months to share an improved contingency plan. Driving licence backlogs at the DVLA 7 b) The DVLA and the Department should also jointly write to us, at the same time or earlier, to set out lessons learned from the driving licence backlogs saga and how they are responding to the lessons. c) The Department should ensure it understands the impact of the DVLA taking on work for other government departments and ensure there are mitigations in place to address any negative consequences for the DVLA’s core purpose.
Government Response Summary
The DVLA prioritises its core functions while using its systems and equipment to help other government departments deliver their targets where feasible and works closely with the DVLA to ensure there are no negative consequences on its core purpose.
Government Response
Accepted
HM Government
Accepted
The government agrees with the Committee’s recommendation Recommendation implemented The DVLA prioritises its core functions while using its systems and equipment to help other government departments deliver their targets where feasible. This remains a sensible and practical approach which provides value for money for government and the taxpayer. The department is mindful of the impact taking on work for other government departments might have on the DVLA, outside of its core functions as detailed above, and works closely with the DVLA to ensure there are no negative consequences on its core purpose.