Source · Select Committees · Public Accounts Committee
Forty-first Report - Driving licence backlogs at the DVLA
Public Accounts Committee
HC 735
Published 17 March 2023
Conclusions (3)
9
Conclusion
From April 2020 to March 2022, the DVLA did not answer 60 million calls to its drivers’ licence customer service number, 94% of the total it received. The number of calls to the DVLA about driving licences surged in Summer 2020 and stayed above pre- pandemic levels for two years, …
16
Conclusion
Not Addressed
During the COVID-19 pandemic, the DVLA prioritised those services with the highest volumes of applications or where it believed processing delays would cause greater problems. The DVLA told us that in 2020, it prioritised reducing the backlog in paper applications for vehicle-related transactions, because at the time, these backlogs were …
Government Response Summary
The response discusses the success of the DVLA's online services during the pandemic and the challenges with paper applications and medical applications, but it doesn't address the prioritisation decisions made during the pandemic.
17
Conclusion
Not Addressed
The DVLA’s system for managing paper-based driving licence applications relies on people being on site to manually process applications. The DVLA and the Department told us that when they determined priorities in 2020, they knew this system was susceptible to disruption during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that the solution was …
Government Response Summary
The response discusses the success of the DVLA's online services during the pandemic and the challenges with paper applications and medical applications but does not address the DVLA's reliance on in-person processing of paper applications.