Drivers who have suffered health problems are wrongly being kept off the road for years due to failings by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, an investigation has found. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) had instigated a significant programme of improvements to the services offered to medical customers in 2014, prior to the publication of the Parliamentary and Health Services Ombudsman (PHSO)'s report. Significant progress has been made and the DVLA. MOTORISTS will be able to have a digital version of their driving licence on smartphone by next year. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) said it is in the early stages of developing a 'quick, easy and secure' service for drivers. So here's a little prototype of something we're working on.
. Oliver Morley, Chief Executive Officer Parent agency Website The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency ( DVLA;: Asiantaeth Trwyddedu Gyrwyr a Cherbydau) is the organisation of the responsible for maintaining a database of drivers in and a for the entire. Its counterpart for drivers in is the (DVA). The agency issues, organises collection of (also known as and road fund licence) and sells. The DVLA is an of the (DfT). The current Chief Executive of the agency is Oliver Morley.
The DVLA is based in, with a prominent 16-storey building in and offices in. It was previously known as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre (DVLC). 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 21st 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 (for some transactions) by phone. DVLA introduced Electronic Vehicle Licensing (EVL) in 2004, allowing customers to pay vehicle excise duty online and by telephone. However, customers still have the option to tax their vehicles via the.
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. Contents. History Originally, vehicle registration was the responsibility of Borough and County councils throughout Great Britain, a system created by the. The licensing system was centralised in 1965 and administered from the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre (DVLC) in Swansea. In 1990, the DVLC was renamed as the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), becoming an executive agency of Department for Transport. British Forces Germany civilian vehicles Civilian vehicles used in by members of or their families are registered with the DVLA on behalf of the. Diplomatic and consular vehicles Official diplomatic and consular vehicles are registered with the DVLA on behalf of the.
DVLA database. Pre-2012 logo of DVLA The 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 who have not paid the, or who exceed speed limits on a road that has by matching the cars to their keepers utilising the DVLA database. The current DVLA vehicle register was built by 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 architecture and uses the, rather than the, as the primary key to track vehicles, eliminating the possibility of having multiple registrations for a single vehicle.
The (VIC) 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 however this scheme was later scrapped in October 2014. When an insurance company writes off a car, the registration document (V5 logbook) 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, 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 from. Employment Staff of the DVLA are predominantly female whereas other parts of the are predominantly male. Starting salaries are just over £12,500. In November 2007, a report criticised the 'amazingly high' levels of 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 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. Fines, vehicle seizure and civil penalties. The of this section is. Relevant discussion may be found on the.
Please do not remove this message until. (December 2017) The DVLA uses advertising to warn drivers that if they do not pay their road tax, their cars may be. This is despite the, Section 12, which states: 'all fines and forfeitures before conviction are illegal and void.' In the UK, all have. The DVLA therefore stands equal to private citizens, not above them. It is not a court of law. When seeking a such as a SORN 'fine', so-called, the DVLA has the right to sue car owners in a civil court.
In practice the DVLA illegally this judicial procedure, bypasses the, and levies a fine of £40, £80 or more, without regard to such as illness, documents lost in the post, etc. The SORN scheme, which was never debated in Parliament, is also 'daft, pointless legislation' in which motorists; '.are asked to confirm what the DVLA already know. If their acknowledgment is lost in the post, you might need proof that they've confirmed that you've confirmed what they already know.if the DVLA makes a mistake, (it claims that) (car owners) are responsible, not them.' The clamping of vehicles, explicitly outlawed in Scotland, may in English law constitute the offence of 'holding property to '. Daily Telegraph Motoring columnist Honest John claims that the DVLA levies £1000 fines for non notification of a vehicle sale, in cases where the notification has been posted but the DVLA claims non-receipt. A arises; 'it is in the interests of the DVLA to lose as many of these notifications as possible to maximise their revenue.' But, says Honest John, proof of posting is a valid defence in law.
According to the fines levied by the DVLA are grossly disproportionate and do not represent justice, but are part of an unofficial, supplementary tax-gathering system. Controversies Missing documents In 2006, 120,000 to 130,000 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. Main article: On 7 February 2007, a 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 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 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 DVLC in Swansea is regularly referred to in the British political. Is regularly threatened with reassignment there.
In the episode, is scheduled to give an address there. See also. References. 4 November 2013.
Vehicles And Drivers Licensing Department
Retrieved 4 November 2013. 21 June 2013. Retrieved 2 September 2013. Department for Transport. Archived from on 18 December 2010. Retrieved 10 January 2011. BBC News Online.
13 November 2012. Retrieved 8 February 2013. Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency.
Retrieved 13 July 2015. Oates, John (20 January 2010). The Register.
Retrieved 4 February 2010. BBC News Online.
8 December 2012. Retrieved 9 February 2013. 23 November 2009. Archived from on 20 July 2011. Retrieved 4 February 2010. ^ Public and Commercial Services Union 29 August 2008. BBC News - 20 November 2007.
The A-Register, 'DVLA off-road system seriously off-message'. 3/5/2010., 'Petty legislation alienates car owners', 22/3/2010. anon, 'Motorist given £100 fine after car was clamped on own driveway', 12/5/2009. Honest John, 'New DVLA fine', 10/9/2012., The triumph of the Political Class, Simon and Schuster, 2007, chapter four. Kemp, Phil (31 January 2010). BBC Radio 5 live.
Retrieved 4 February 2010. 6 December 2007. Retrieved 7 November 2007. BBC Watchdog. Retrieved 4 June 2010. The Telegraph. 1 April 2012.
Retrieved 9 February 2013. External links.
Sir John Bourn, head of the National Audit Office, today reported to Parliament on how the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) 1 successfully avoided millennium-compliance problems when replacing its computerised vehicles system, although the project took twice the anticipated timescale to complete. The report details the project management problems encountered by the DVLA in replacing its twenty-five year old Vehicles database system with a bespoke product developed by Electronic Data Systems Ltd (EDS) 2 The Agency opted in mid-October 1999 to implement the final phase of the replacement system, as it expected the old master record system would develop millennium-compliance failures that would have had serious implications for the DVLA’s statutory operations. However, at that time the associated Information Technology (IT) Disaster Recovery Plan had not yet been fully tested. Nevertheless, Sir John was able to issue an unqualified audit opinion on the Agency’s 1999-2000 accounts. The £5 million, fixed-price contract to replace the Agency’s Vehicle computer system by a phased implementation was originally expected to take two years, and was planned to be completed by October 1998. The report highlights a number of issues in the management of this project. The project’s last implementation phase slipped to March 1999 and then to August 1999.
The Agency had drawn up contingency plans in case both the new and existing vehicle computer systems failed, but these fallback measures mainly relied upon manual processing by up to 400 temporary staff. Since the DVLA could not guarantee to handle the volume of work manually, this would have led to a serious disruption of customer services. The final phase implementation avoided this. When the ‘go-live’ decision was taken, several project elements had yet to be fully or successfully tested, including the processing of some refunds of excise duty to vehicle keepers, the licensing of fleet vehicles and the operation of the IT Disaster Recovery Plan.
This Plan has still not been fully tested, and Sir John considers that it should be finalised and testing completed urgently. EDS are planning this for completion in October 2001. In the new system’s first year of operation a number of problems arose, particularly with the timely processing of excise duty refunds to vehicle keepers, for which a three-day backlog of some 100,000 cases had developed by January 2000.
Sir John also noted that during the Christmas period 1999 some instances of corrupt data had been downloaded to the Police National Computer, although no evidence was found of any wrongful arrests or legal action based on this incorrect data. EDS was able to resolve the problem in January 2000. A further significant risk to enforcement activities was averted when the DVLA’s manual controls detected that the printing procedures had generated some 100,000 duplicate marks for issue to motor dealers.
The contract for the replacement vehicles system entitled EDS to submit claims for stage payments despite the significant project delays. It was August 1998 before EDS acknowledged that it could not meet the planned ‘go-live’ date of 1 October 1998. By June 1998 EDS had claimed 85 per cent of the monies due at that point, but the Agency was retaining some £560,000 against undelivered products or functions. The Agency also retained £200,000 (4 per cent) of the project value until final completion in October 2000. However, Sir John noted that the DVLA had successfully avoided spiralling project costs by holding EDS to the fixed price and also by negotiating reductions in the associated running costs of the project provided by EDS. 'I am concerned at the significant delays in achieving the final implementation of this database system by the dvla, particularly as its predecessor was known not to be millennium-compliant.
The agency took a high-risk but necessary decision to implement the final phases in October 1999, before system testing was fully completed. In doing so, they avoided the breakdown of a key customer service to both enforcement agencies and the public.' The report also comments positively on other aspects of the DVLA’s operations. Sir John, 14 February 2001.
Notes for Editors 1The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is an executive agency of the Department of the Environment, Transport and the Regions. It employs some 4,650 staff, mainly at its Swansea headquarters, and operates a network of regional offices across Great Britain. Its annual operating costs total some £229 million. 2 Electronic Data Systems Ltd (EDS) acquired the IT division of the Agency in 1993.
The contract included terms that committed the Agency to employ EDS for all development work on both the master Vehicle and Driver database systems until 30 June 1999. Press notices and reports are available from the date of publication on the NAO website at Hard copies can be obtained from The Stationery Office on 0845 702 3474. The Comptroller and Auditor General, Sir John Bourn, is the head of the National Audit Office employing some 750 staff. He and the NAO are totally independent of Government. He certifies the accounts of all Government departments and a wide range of other public sector bodies; and he has statutory authority to report to Parliament on the economy, efficiency and effectiveness with which departments and other bodies have used their resources.