Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency

3.Mr A complains DVLA lost his V5C vehicle logbook and then asked him to pay £25 to replace it. He also complains DVLA should have known he had changed his address because it had sent a driving licence to his new address.

4.Mr A tells us he has found these events stressful. He would like the £25 returned and financial compensation to put right the stress and anxiety he experienced.

5.In February 2020 Mr A moved house and needed to update DVLA about the new address where his vehicle would be registered. The process for doing this is to either:

• fill in the relevant section of the V5C document and send it to DVLA, either directly or through a Post Office that offers the service

• use the online change of address service.

6.Mr A chose to use the first option and told us he took his V5C to the local Post Office on 31 October 2021 to be processed by the counter staff. He was taxing his vehicle at the same time.

7.Mr A thought no more about it until the next year when he noticed he had not received the usual V11 reminder from DVLA for his vehicle to be taxed. When he enquired with DVLA it told him it had not received his V5C in 2021 so his vehicle was still registered to his old address. He was advised to complete a V62 form and pay a £25 fee so new V5C would be sent to him with his new address on it. The V62 form is used where someone needs to apply for a logbook because they no longer have the original.

8.Mr A was not happy to pay for an item that he believed DVLA lost. He complained to DVLA via his MP on 29 September 2022. The MP received a response on 7 October and wrote back to DVLA on 20 October. DVLA replied on 30 October giving further details about the events and offering to refer the case to the Independent Complaints Assessor (ICA), who independently review complaints about the Department for Transport and its agencies (including DVLA).

9. After completing all stages of DVLA’s complaint handling process, Mr A took his complaint to the ICA. He then brought his complaint to us.

12.When we consider a complaint, we look at whether there are signs the organisation got something wrong. We do this by comparing what should have happened with what did happen. We have examined each part of Mr A’s complaint and explained our thinking below.

Mr A complains DVLA lost his V5C and then asked him to pay £25 to replace it

13.We can see in the DVLA complaints responses and in the ICA report there was no evidence to show how the V5C became lost. During our enquiries with DVLA we saw how it had safely received the V5C. But, as there was nothing on the electronic Post Office transaction to explain why the V5C had been sent to DVLA, and as the V5C itself was blank, it was rejected.

14.It was sent back to the address on the front, which was Mr A’s old address, with a V177 letter. This is a standard letter used to tell customers that DVLA has received a V5C but it cannot take any action as there is no indication of why it was sent. By this time, Mr A had not lived at that address for almost two years and his post was no longer being redirected.

15.We asked DVLA why it had not found this out when it investigated Mr A’s complaint. It explained the V5C had been returned at a very early stage of its processes and it was not visible on the system that is checked when a complaint is received, or when a case is prepared for the ICA to investigate.

16.DVLA acted in line with its internal policy ‘Operating Instructions’ when returning the V5C that had no information on it explaining why it had been sent.

17. For this reason we have not seen that DVLA did anything wrong as it did not lose Mr A’s V5C. We hope the extra information above helps Mr A understand what happened.

Mr A complains DVLA should have known about his address change

18.We asked DVLA about this and it explained there is no link between the driving licence and vehicle records, as the departments who deal with licensing and vehicle taxation are separate. As such, a notification to one department will not necessarily trigger an update in another part of the organisation.

19.We appreciate this is frustrating for Mr A and it would have been helpful if these systems were linked. Having considered the matter carefully, not having a shared information system for all parts of DVLA is not in itself a failing. This is because there is no obligation for DVLA to check all records from separate departments whenever it receives correspondence, or to have a shared system. With this in mind, we cannot say DVLA failed to act in line with its internal operating instructions policy for handling vehicle registration.

20. We thank Mr A for bringing his complaint to us and hope he understands why we are taking no further action on his complaint.

1.To reach this decision the Parliamentary and Health Service Ombudsman has carefully considered Mr A’s complaint about the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). We are sorry to hear of the distress and frustration he describes. We accept he felt he did nothing wrong but unfairly ended up paying £25 to correct a system error.

2.We have decided to take no further action. This is because we have not seen any signs of mistakes by DVLA, and we explain this below.