The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency is the organisation of the UK government
responsible for maintaining a database of drivers in Great Britain and a
database of vehicles for the entire United Kingdom. Its counterpart for
drivers in Northern Ireland is the Driver and Vehicle Agency. The agency
issues driving licences, organises collection of vehicle excise duty and
sells personalised registrations. The DVLA is an executive agency of the
Department for Transport. The current Chief Executive of the agency is Oliver
Morley. The DVLA is based in Swansea, Wales,
with a prominent 16-storey building in Clase and offices in Swansea Vale. It
was previously known as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre. The agency
previously had a network of 39 offices around Great Britain, known as the Local
Office Network, where users could attend to apply for licences and transact other
business, but in the early 20th century the local offices were completely closed
by December 2013. The agency's work is consequently fully centralised in
Swansea, with the majority of users having to transact remotely - by post or
by phone or online. DVLA introduced Electronic Vehicle
Licensing in 2004 with customers now being able to pay vehicle excise duty
online and by phone. However, customers still have the option to tax their
vehicles via the Post Office. A seven-year contract enabling the Post
Office to continue to process car tax applications was agreed in November
2012, with the option of a three-year extension.
History Originally, vehicle registration was the
responsibility of Borough and County councils throughout Great Britain, a
system created by the Motor Car Act 1903. The licensing system was
centralised in 1965 and administered from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing
Centre in Swansea. In 1990, the DVLC was renamed as the Driver and Vehicle
Licensing Agency, becoming an executive agency of Department for Transport.
= British Forces Germany civilian vehicles =
Civilian vehicles used in Germany by members of British Forces Germany or
their families are registered with the DVLA on behalf of the Ministry of
Defence. = Diplomatic and consular vehicles =
Official diplomatic and consular vehicles are registered with the DVLA on
behalf of the Foreign and Commonwealth Office.
DVLA database The vehicle register held by DVLA is
used in many ways. For example, by the DVLA itself to identify untaxed
vehicles, and by outside agencies to identify keepers of cars entering
central London who have not paid the congestion charge, or who exceed speed
limits on a road that has speed cameras by matching the cars to their keepers
utilising the DVLA database. The current DVLA vehicle register was built by EDS
under a £5 million contract signed in 1996, with a planned implementation date
on October 1998, though actual implementation was delayed by a year. It
uses a client–server architecture and uses the vehicle identification number,
rather than the registration plate, as the primary key to track vehicles,
eliminating the possibility of having multiple registrations for a single
vehicle. The Vehicle Identity Check was
introduced to help reduce vehicle crime. It is intended to deter criminals from
disguising stolen cars with the identity of written off or scrapped vehicles.
When an insurance company writes off a car, the registration document is
surrendered to them and destroyed. The insurance company will then notify the
DVLA that the vehicle has been written off. This notification will set a "VIC
marker" on the vehicle record on the DVLA database.
DVLA database records are used by commercial vehicle check companies to
offer a comprehensive individual car check to prospective purchasers.
However, the accuracy of the data held remains a continuing problem. Anyone can
request information from the database if they purport to have just cause to need
it, for a fee of £2.50. The database of drivers, developed in
the late 1980s, holds details of some 42 million driving licence holders in the
UK. It is used to produce driving licences and to assist bodies such as
the Driving Standards Agency, police and courts in the enforcement of legislation
concerning driving entitlements and road safety.
The DVLA revealed in December 2012 that it had temporarily banned 294 public
bodies, including local councils and police forces, for not using their
access to the database correctly between 2006 and 2012. A further 38 bodies were
banned permanently during the period. Financial information
Between 2002 and 2015 it is estimated that the DVLA will spend £500 million on
information technology from IBM. Employment
Staff of the DVLA are predominantly female whereas other parts of the
Department for Transport are predominantly male. Starting salaries
are just over £12,500. In November 2007, a Public Accounts Committee report
criticised the "amazingly high" levels of sick leave among staff at the DVLA,
where employees took an average of three weeks per year of sick leave. The report
said that overall sickness leave at the DfT and its seven agencies averaged 10.4
working days per full-time employee in 2005, which they calculated as costing
taxpayers £24 million. While sick leave rates at the department itself and four
of its agencies were below average—at the DVLA and DSA, which together employ
more than 50% of all DfT staff—they were "significantly higher". Committee
chairman Edward Leigh said it was surprising the agencies could "function
adequately". In 2008 DVLA staff went on a one-day strike over pay inequality
arguing that they should receive similar salaries to other employees of the
Department for Transport. The most recent level of sickness absence for
2012/13 was 6.7 days. Advertising
The DVLA uses advertising to warn drivers that if they do not pay their
road tax, their cars may be crushed. Controversies
= Missing documents = In 2006, 120,000 to 130,000 vehicle
registration certificates went missing. A BBC investigation in 2010 found that
vehicles worth £13 million had been stolen using the documents in the 18
months preceding the investigation. Around ten cars are found each week to
have forged log books and police said it would be decades before they were all
recovered. = DVLA letter bombs =
On 7 February 2007, a letter bomb was sent to the DVLA in Swansea and injured
four people. It is suspected that this is part of a group of letter bombs sent
to other organisations that deal with the administration of motoring charges
and offences, such as Capita in central London, which was targeted a few days
earlier. Miles Cooper, aged 27, a school caretaker, was arrested on 19 February
2007, and charged on 22 February. The DVLA have since installed X-Ray machines
in all post opening areas to reduce the effectiveness of any further attacks.
= Wrong confidential records on surveys In December 2007, it was revealed that
while sending out surveys to 1,215 drivers, the DVLA sent out confidential
details, but to the wrong owners. The error occurred during the sending out of
routine surveys, and was not discovered until members of the public contacted
the DVLA to notify them of the error. = Lost entitlements =
In 2009 BBC's Watchdog reported that entitlements, specifically the
entitlement to drive a motorcycle, were being lost from reissued driving
licences. In 2005 the same programme highlighted drivers who had lost
entitlements to drive heavy goods vehicles in a similar way.
= Sale of details = In 2010 it was revealed that the DVLA
had sold drivers' details from the database to certain private parking
enforcement companies run by individuals with criminal records. The DVLA sells
details to companies for £2.50, but it was found that the agency had sold some
of these to a business which had been fined weeks before for unfair business
practices. In popular culture
The DVLA in Swansea is regularly referred to in the British political
sitcom Yes, Minister. Bernard Woolley is regularly threatened with reassignment
there. In the episode "Big Brother", Jim Hacker is scheduled to give an address
there. References
External links Official website