Transport Committee
Oral evidence: Work of the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, HC 816
Wednesday 5 July 2023
Ordered by the House of Commons to be published on 5 July 2023.
Members present: Iain Stewart (Chair); Mike Amesbury; Mr Ben Bradshaw; Jack Brereton; Paul Howell; Karl McCartney; Grahame Morris; Gavin Newlands; Greg Smith.
Questions 1–62
Witnesses
I: Julie Lennard, Chief Executive, DVLA; and Lynette Rose, Strategy, Policy and Communications Director, DVLA.
Witnesses: Julie Lennard and Lynette Rose.
Q1 Chair: Before we begin, could I ask you to give your name and position for our records?
Julie Lennard: I am Julie Lennard, the chief executive of DVLA.
Lynette Rose: I am Lynette Rose, director of strategy, policy and communications for DVLA.
Q2 Chair: Welcome to the Committee. Thank you for your time this morning. The DVLA was last in front of this Committee in July 2021. How would you sum up your performance as an organisation since then?
Julie Lennard: It is obviously two years since we were last here in front of the Committee and it is a very different story for us for this year. In 2021 it was the peak of the pandemic and the peak of backlogs for us. We have eliminated all of our backlogs. We had eliminated all the backlogs relating to vehicle transactions by February 2022 and for drivers by July 2022. For drivers’ medical we were back to normal processing times by the turn of this year. We are in a very different place.
We have also been able to do a huge amount more in our digital transformation. I use the word “transformation” quite loosely. That suggests there is an end point and that it stops, and of course with technology it is always changing. We are on the second, third, fourth generation of our technology. I am hoping that we will have a chance to talk about some of the technical achievements we have had this year. There are things like our customer account, which we have been working on. The public launch of that will be imminent. It would be great to have a chance to talk about some of our digital progress over the last year because it really has been significant.
Q3 Chair: I am sure that my colleagues will want to dig into some of that detail later. Looking ahead, is the improvement in your performance set to continue or are there fresh challenges coming up?
Julie Lennard: There are always challenges in an organisation the size and scale of DVLA, but performance is very good. We are very positive about the year ahead of us as well.
Q4 Chair: The publication of your business plan has been delayed. Why has that happened?
Julie Lennard: It is with the Department. There is a clearance process to go through, so it is with the Department. I believe the Minister wrote to the Committee on Friday about that.
Q5 Chair: But from your perspective it is all signed off and ready to go.
Julie Lennard: Pretty much. It is always an iterative process with business plans, but it is pretty much there.
Q6 Chair: We understand that a public bodies review of the DVLA is due to take place in this financial year. Can you give us any more information about the timing of that?
Julie Lennard: That is one for the Department. Obviously, it is not one we are running ourselves. That would be for the Department.
Q7 Chair: Does the delay in the business plan and the review impact on your priorities for the coming year?
Julie Lennard: No. We have already discussed with Ministers the key priorities and draft KPIs for this year, which we are working to, so no.
Q8 Gavin Newlands: In processing times, it is a more upbeat picture. What are the DVLA’s current processing times for applications made online and applications made by post? Do you have those figures to hand?
Julie Lennard: I do. Applications made online are the same as they were throughout the entire pandemic because that ran really well. Our target is to turn around applications and dispatch them within three days of receipt, and we are meeting those targets. If you apply online, which over 80% of our customers do, you have a very good service, and have had throughout the entire pandemic.
On paper, our target is to turn around things like driving licence applications in 10 days. We are doing that for about 90% of them. Last year, we had a bit of a bumpy start to that because we were still in backlog in April/May. Since then, it has been a vastly improved picture. Yes, we are on track.
Q9 Gavin Newlands: What was the figure for the turnaround time by post?
Julie Lennard: Ten days.
Q10 Gavin Newlands: On vocational applications made by post, is it a different timeframe?
Julie Lennard: It is. Last year, we put in a stretch target and halved it, down to five days’ turnaround for postal applications. That was quite challenging at the beginning because it was obviously a stretch target. That is why we put it in place, but we met it last year for the majority of the year.
Q11 Gavin Newlands: It is a much more positive picture in that respect. However, I am sure that most of us have had constituents get in touch about medical applications. What is the backlog in that situation at the moment? I am looking at casework I have at the moment.
Julie Lennard: There isn’t a backlog. We are back to our normal run rates and processing levels. We still have challenges, as we have always been clear with the Committee and, in fact, in our business plans and annual reports that have been published. As you know, we are very dependent in a lot of those cases for the NHS to come back to us. The NHS has been under significant pressure, particularly over the winter. Some people are waiting longer than we would like. Where we have the information, we are making decisions very rapidly.
Last year, we made a record number of licensing decisions for medical, at 887,000. The year before it was around 500,000, so you can see the step change in volumes going through in the last financial year. Of those, something like 240,000 were done within 20 days and with 84,000 a decision was made on the same day that we received it. If we can make a decision with just the information that we get from the driver, we do that very quickly. Where more delay comes in, it is, generally speaking, when we have to write for more information from the driver themselves, from their GP or from consultants. That particularly becomes an issue when one person has multiple medical conditions, which is increasingly common.
Q12 Gavin Newlands: Is there any level of prioritisation with regard to these cases? For instance, you may have somebody who lives in a rural area and doesn’t have any real access to public transport, whereas, similar to our earlier session, somebody who lives in a city can get by without a car. It is not the case for somebody in a rural location, or for somebody who has had their LGV licence suspended for medical reasons and is no longer able to earn a living until that is resolved. Is any prioritisation given to any of these cases?
Julie Lennard: There is. That is one of the learnings that we had through the pandemic on how we worked. Now, every single medical application is triaged when it comes in. We are trying to stream it. That is how we are getting to the point, through the triage, of being able to have over 80,000 where the decision is made the same day. If we can, we will, because they are being triaged. That will also be especially looking for people whose livelihoods depend on it. We prioritise those but, again, we tend to be reliant on hearing back from the NHS to really get them through. We do prioritise and we have a triage process now for doing that.
Q13 Gavin Newlands: Is that process or triage policy something that you could send to us, or is it a human judgment at the time rather than any specific process that they have to go through?
Julie Lennard: It is a human judgment in the fact that every single one is looked at by a member of staff when it comes in. They then have guidelines to follow within that. Specifically, what they are really looking for is to be able to stream out the things that we can make decisions on quickly. As I say, if all the information is there they will make sure that it gets to a team to do that.
Q14 Gavin Newlands: Are those guidelines published?
Julie Lennard: They are not. We can always write to you with more information on what we do.
Q15 Gavin Newlands: It would be useful. From a casework point of view, if people come to us it would be useful for us to know what those guidelines are. If they think there is a delay, we can perhaps write to you and challenge it.
Julie Lennard: Absolutely. To be honest, we are trying to find every way we can to speed up that process because we absolutely appreciate that it is very difficult, particularly, as you say, if someone is in a rural area and especially if their livelihood depends on it. We do not want to cause any delay. We are trying to get those through as quickly as we can.
Q16 Paul Howell: While we are talking about medical applications, you say that the backlog has recovered on most things. Can you give us a sense of whether there are still any old ones, say over 90 or over 200 days outstanding? Are there any real laggards still sitting out there?
Julie Lennard: Yes, I do have some, but they largely relate to where we are waiting for information. Over 50% of everything I have at the moment is waiting for information. We cannot do anything else with any of that 50% at the moment because we do not have the information. We have some that are over the 10-week period, which I know the Committee used before as that kind of benchmark. It is a much better picture than where we were last year, but there are some that are over 10 weeks that are waiting. They are mostly medical, and it is where we are mostly waiting on the NHS or the driver themselves to give us more information.
Q17 Paul Howell: Apologies if I have missed this, but on the NHS side of things, clearly we all know that the NHS is busy. We all know how busy GPs are in particular. Have you been able to look at your processes and questions to try to make them as easy as possible and try to get as simple or as quick an answer through as simple and quick a process as possible in that space?
Julie Lennard: You are absolutely right on that. We have been doing that. What we did during the pandemic—we still have it in place—was to look at certain medical conditions, particularly where people have a restricted licence, so it is only issued for one, two or three years because of their medical condition. There are certain medical conditions where that particularly applies. What we have done is to take a very pragmatic approach. When someone has previously applied and we have had information from medical professionals, if their condition is very stable and they have always been very compliant, and all the information from the medical professionals previously has provided the evidence for that, we and our doctors will make judgment calls to say, “Because we only had something a year ago, we do not need to go again this year.” We might go back when they come in the year after, just to check. It is getting the balance always between road safety and the best thing for the motorist. We are absolutely looking at everything we can do to speed up that process while still of course maintaining road safety.
Lynette Rose: There are some other things we have done. We changed the law last year around extending the number of medical professionals who could complete the paperwork for us. At the moment we are only seeing the low hundreds coming in. Anecdotally, we understand that some doctors are still signing off after maybe the diabetic nurse has completed the form. We are reviewing that at the moment to see if we can get the message out more widely to encourage other medical professionals to help.
Q18 Paul Howell: Following that thought process a little bit, research and knowledge moves on all the time, particularly in health. Is any review required of whether something needs to be annual versus biannual or whatever for specific circumstances, or is that ongoing?
Julie Lennard: It is an ongoing process. We have six medical panels that are made up of experts in their field. It is under that constant review. They are at the sharp end. They are all practising medical professionals and consultants, very highly qualified people, who are able to give us that kind of challenge and advice where medical standards and advances have moved on. We are absolutely open to that. Do you want to add any more on the panels, Lynette?
Lynette Rose: Some of the medical rules are laid out in legislation. We have little room for manoeuvre there. Some of it is more a matter of interpretation. That is where we use the advice of the panels to help set the time periods for a licence to be issued and what evidence to look at. We change that information and make sure it is available to GPs and the medical community more widely. We are looking to see what else we can do in that space.
Q19 Paul Howell: I have one final question. It seems like you are continually looking at iterative changes. Is there any need to take a complete step back and just say, “Do we need to start again?” Is it at that stage, or is the process you are following now still appropriate?
Julie Lennard: The underlying legislative framework relating to drivers’ medical dates back 40-odd years. It is definitely the kind of thing that would merit a proper review. When that legislation came into effect it was very focused on single medical conditions and assumed that people would have one condition. We have seen with the advances in medicine over the decades comorbidities, with people having more than one condition. Those figures have increased enormously, which makes this much more complex and brings into question some of the legislation that underpins it. It is one of those things that needs to be very much evidence-based. It is obviously very much an expert field.
Q20 Mike Amesbury: Good morning, Julie and Lynette. The Department has committed to providing the Public Accounts Committee, by September, with a statement on lessons learned from the pandemic. What internal reviews have already taken place? What lessons have been learned and how are things going in terms of implementation?
Julie Lennard: We have continuously done that. Even in 2020 we did our very first lessons learned, so it was early on, but of course things changed as the pandemic progressed. Our board has obviously taken a very close interest in that.
One of the big things for us—I talked about this at the Public Accounts Committee, and the decision was taken before my time—was to centralise everything in Swansea and close the local office network for DVLA. For a good 10 years that was absolutely the right decision, but it made us less resilient in the event of a pandemic because we became very susceptible to rates of infection in local areas. Organisations like the Passport Office, which also had a lot of people working in an office-based environment through the pandemic, had offices that they could use in different places. They were not all in one place.
That was one of the things that we learned about resilience. We now have an office in Birmingham. It is for us to look at and think about. That Birmingham office is quite a commitment for us. There is something about resilience. There are real benefits to being based in one location. There are also some benefits, in the event of unforeseen circumstances, in having some resilience with another office.
One of the other things that has really changed for us, and something we have learned, is greater flexibility with our staff and how they are trained, so that they can work across different areas. With some things like drivers’ medical, our people are very well trained and are specialists in that. Before the pandemic, we had people particularly trained in one condition, so they were focused on that. What we have done a lot since then is multi-skilling, so that people do more than the one condition.
We have introduced new roles. Now, people in our contact centre dealing with drivers’ medical also do certain casework. The holy grail for us, when someone phones up, is being able to go in and help them there and then on the phone, because they are also trained as caseworkers. Clearly, the most complex cases, particularly those that need our doctors’ input, are not candidates for that, but there are cases where we can do it. We have really changed how we train people and our thinking about the roles. We are multi-skilling our staff and they have really risen to that challenge as well. Yes, we have learned huge amounts through the last three years. That is one of the reasons why, for the last year, we have done well and have recovered from it.
Q21 Mike Amesbury: Certainly, a number of recommendations were made by the Public Accounts Committee around communication with customers, our constituents—people were facing horrendous delays—and fast-tracking. Have you made those improvements? What are you going to report in September?
Julie Lennard: I would not like to pre-empt that report before we go back to the Public Accounts Committee. We were talking just now about drivers’ medical and some of the things we have done there about triaging. We were not doing that before, so there are things in terms of fast-tracking that we put in place during the pandemic and that we will keep because they are working.
On communications more broadly, one of the things that we are working on, and hopefully we will come to at some point, is the digital change that we are making. One of the big changes is launching our customer and vehicle account. That is imminent. It is a huge undertaking for us. Historically, DVLA has the drivers side and the vehicle side of things. For the first time in DVLA’s 54-year history, we will be bringing those together. The scale of that, with 50 million drivers and 40 million vehicles, is no mean feat. With the customer account we will be able to do that. You will be able to see all of your information in one place, and you will be able to start transacting through the account. We will do it on an iterative basis. When we launch, one of the first things you will be able to do is switch to a digital reminder for your car tax. You will not have to get it through the post if you prefer to have it sent to you by text or email.
Once you have an account set up, you will go through our identity platform the first time so that we know we are talking to the right person. Beyond that it is a password and a two-factor authentication code to your email or text. The difference ultimately in communication with people, once we have got the account up and running and people are using it, will be phenomenal. It is very early days, so you will not see this when it is first live, but certainly for drivers’ medical the first condition we are putting through that is diabetes. You will be able to log in and see where your application is and its status.
In terms of communication there are some longer-term things that we are absolutely working on. All the groundwork is being laid for that. That is not something that will be ready in September, but I can assure you that there is a huge amount of work going on behind the scenes to get us to that point. As I said, our strategy, which finishes next March, is all around focusing on transforming our digital driver services. It is not the vehicles; we are starting with drivers. That is what we have done a huge amount of work on. That is a five-year programme and will take us beyond the three-year strategy. We are making really great progress, but I am happy to write to the Committee as soon as the customer vehicle account is in the public domain for Committee members to have a look at it. We want public feedback on it. This is the first iteration. This is what we are building and putting into it. What else would people like to see?
Q22 Mike Amesbury: Would it be fair to say that the customer experience is not where it needs to be?
Julie Lennard: If you are applying online, no, I don’t agree with that. Eighty-three per cent of all of our transactions are online and the numbers are big. When you look at the NAO report, which looked back across the whole pandemic, we issued 24 million driving licences. We also dealt with 118 million applications relating to vehicles. The scale at which we work is very unlike most other Government Departments in direct contact with the public.
As I said, 83% of everything we do is online. Customers who transact online always have, and continue to have, a really good experience. It is very fast and very easy. It works really well. If I could get everyone using online, we would not be having these conversations, but I think we are some way from being able to get everyone transacting with us online. We still have a bit further to go with some of our services to make those easier. Part of our driver transformation perspective is to make it even easier than it is now for people to transact with us online.
Q23 Chair: That leads on neatly to my next question. There will always be some people who do not want to, or cannot, access your services online and will want a face-to-face service. You have recently extended your contract with the Post Office, I believe. Could you tell me a little bit more about how long that extension is for?
Julie Lennard: Absolutely. To give some background to that, we had come to the end of a 10-year contract with the Post Office. It is a cross-Government contract; it is not our direct contract with the Post Office. At the moment, Crown Commercial and Cabinet Office are in the process of a live tender, a live commercial process, for a front-office counter service. I am not directly involved personally, but I assume that the Post Office will bid to be on that, but so could many other companies that would be in a position to offer over-the-counter services. Obviously, the purpose of those cross-Government frameworks is to provide the best value for money for the taxpayer, to provide that kind of competition.
What we needed was some kind of bridging, as that is not ready yet and our contract finished first. There are other Departments that will be finishing their contracts with them imminently as well and then the cross-Government framework will be available. We agreed with the Post Office that, instead of exiting at the end of the 10-year contract, we would extend for a year and then exit that contract at that point.
Q24 Chair: To understand the scale and the number of people who use that, I think you said 83% use your services digitally.
Julie Lennard: Yes.
Q25 Chair: Is the remaining 17% over the counter?
Julie Lennard: No, most of the rest of it is paper. They only offer a limited number of services through the Post Office. The most popular is car tax through the Post Office, which is our main digital service. You can also phone. It is a 24/7 service. If you are not comfortable with using online, the automated phone system for paying your car tax is extremely easy to use.
As I say, the Post Office handles a limited number of services. As an overall proportion it is a small number of our transactions, and it has reduced massively over the 10 years we have had that contract. It is clearly very much a reducing contract because so many more people have switched to going online and find it more convenient to do that than go to a post office.
Q26 Chair: Will you commit to having that over-the-counter facility for the future?
Julie Lennard: As I say, I don’t know who is bidding to be on the contract, so I could not commit to one individual supplier. Obviously, we would need to see.
Q27 Chair: But the principle.
Julie Lennard: What we will do as we go forward is assess whether or not things are needed over the counter. It will probably be on a service-by-service basis. It is only a small number of services anyway that we have through them now. We will certainly make sure that we review everything to see what is actually required. Of course, you get to a point where it becomes more cost-effective to move that across. As I say, we will do that service by service for the very small number that are still with the Post Office.
Q28 Jack Brereton: In this move online, obviously there are some people who cannot submit documents online if they do not have a UK passport or particular codes that they need to submit documents. What proportion of those are still having to send their documents in physically?
Julie Lennard: When I came to the Committee last time, we were getting around 60,000 items of mail a day. It is now down to about 53,000, so it has shifted. Pre-pandemic, 74% of all our transactions were online. Now it is 83%. That equates to an extra 5 million a year now going through online.
We still have a sizeable amount. From an overall perspective it is not big, but our numbers are so big that it does not take a very big percentage for that to be quite a lot of mail. We have done very well again this year. You mentioned people who have non-UK passports. Over this year, one of the things we have done is establish API links with the Home Office to be able to get information digitally, so that we can avoid asking people to send us passports if they are resident here and have the right to remain here. We are doing all we can to reduce that.
Q29 Jack Brereton: That is the share code system.
Julie Lennard: It is different from the share code, actually. It is a direct API. In the same way as we have direct digital links with the UK Passport Office, we are looking to replicate that with the Home Office, where they obviously hold information from biometric residence permits, so that we do not have to ask people to send in documents. If I could reduce that right down, I would.
Q30 Jack Brereton: There are obviously UK residents who may not have passports. Why is it that they can’t just scan a birth certificate or other documents and send electronic versions to you?
Julie Lennard: It depends on what you are looking at. If it is an ID document, from that point of view it is quite challenging. We have very skilled staff looking at those documents to verify that they are genuine. They see a significant number that are not every single month. We have discussed it with the teams and asked, “Is there any way to do this without seeing the actual document?” There really isn’t because of the additional security features that specialists in those fields are aware of but which often are not visible. A lot of checking happens with some of these documents, particularly from certain areas.
Q31 Jack Brereton: You mentioned security. I am concerned about how secure that system is. I have constituents whose documents have been lost by DVLA and have gone missing. They have never got those documents back in some cases. How often are we seeing documents going missing and not getting back to the individuals who have sent them in?
Julie Lennard: I would say very unusually in DVLA itself. What I cannot answer for is what happens when it is in the post. I cannot control that, but I know that there are very limited ways something can get lost in the building. That is one of the advantages of being in one building. This stuff, once it is with us, does not travel that far.
Q32 Jack Brereton: Would you always compensate in those sorts of circumstances, if you had lost a document?
Julie Lennard: If we had lost it we would, but, of course, not if Royal Mail has.
Q33 Jack Brereton: How could you prove that?
Julie Lennard: We know exactly what is coming in and what is going out for us. If it has actually left the building, we will know. Lynette, do you want to add anything?
Lynette Rose: We are developing a customer identity platform, which will look at a wider range, for customers to be able to prove who they are without having to send us paper documents. That work is still very much in progress. We are also working with the Government Digital Service on single sign-on. We are looking at ways in which we can reduce the volume of paper coming in and the inconvenience for customers.
Julie Lennard: The holy grail for us is being able to link across Government Departments and to be able to access information that other Departments hold in a digital way.
Q34 Jack Brereton: Maybe that is something that will be unique. It is often rare in Government that we link up.
Julie Lennard: We have a lot of form with that. We have been doing it with the Passport Office for many years. We will even pick up the passport photo and use it on the driving licence, so it really is making it a quick and easy service. There are other datasets that we would be very keen to get hold of in a digital way to help us. We are actively working for that. To be fair, other Departments are very much in that same space.
Q35 Jack Brereton: You haven’t felt any resistance.
Julie Lennard: No, not at all. I think everyone recognises the value of this. What is challenging when you are transforming digital systems at scale is trying to land everyone’s transformation plans at the same sort of time to do it. We have road maps for what we want to do. Sometimes it is just a case of waiting for another organisation that might have slightly different priorities being ready to be able to do that.
Q36 Chair: My next question is on your digital transformation programme. You have touched on a couple of projects—your customer and vehicle account and the ID platform—in answers to colleagues’ questions. Are there any other initiatives that you are working on at the moment?
Julie Lennard: I have a very long list, but I will edit it for you.
Chair: Give me the highlights.
Julie Lennard: We changed the priority order of how we were doing things during the pandemic. One of the problems we had in 2020, right back in the early stages, was with people applying for their very first driving licence. Obviously, they need to supply a photo and a signature. Previously, we were able to take the photo and the digital signature from the Passport Office. Passports are now signed on delivery, so they do not have a digital signature for us to take. We really got hit quite hard at the beginning of the pandemic with young people applying for their provisional driving licence. We could take a photo from the passport, but we did not have a signature. We ended up saying, “We have everything, but we just need you to sign this bit of paper, send it back and we will scan in a digital version of it.”
As part of our new provisional licence service, we introduced the ability to upload the photo and upload a signature, which is going extremely well. In fact, surprisingly, it has increased the number of people who are taking out provisional licences. To be honest, we have not quite got to the bottom of why that is. There seems to be a whole new demographic out there in terms of numbers.
We are doing things like that. That is going to be rolled out later this year, doing a 10-year renewal. If you do it through customer account, you will also be able to upload a photo of your choice and your signature. That will help people who do not have a passport. We are working on a lot of those sorts of things.
We are looking at having CPC and tacho data in your account by the end of the year. We have done a huge amount with other Government Departments. Over the last year in particular, we have done an awful lot with the police and the Home Office to be able to build new APIs. We have an API first strategy for sharing data.
Q37 Chair: API?
Julie Lennard: It is a fully automated way of being able to share data. At the moment the police national computer, the PNC, gets an update from us every day. Obviously, that is big in terms of scale. The challenge is that these databases are dynamic, and they change, quite literally, minute by minute. We are talking about a volume of 50 million drivers and 40 million vehicles. People buy and sell cars, move house and get points on a licence. They develop medical conditions. That is in a constant state of flux and movement. When you are updating the PNC on a daily basis, you have an issue with latency of data quite quickly. What we have done is build APIs. We started with a vehicle one. There is also a driver API for the police. They are able to do real-time inquiry checks. It limits the amount of data that is shared. They query against particular vehicles, or they might want a particular driver’s number, photo, images and details if they are pulling someone over for a traffic stop.
We have done a huge amount behind the scenes to make things quicker and easier for us, and for other Government Departments. We have done the same thing for the Courts Service—HMCTS—with APIs. We are able to exchange data with the Courts Service when they are giving people points, or points are coming off or bans are overturned. We are able to exchange that data. We have done a huge amount over the last year. The work has been in progress over the last three years, but a lot has come to fruition in this past year.
Q38 Gavin Newlands: In the last few years, staffing is an issue you have had to deal with in some detail with this Committee. Last year’s annual report said that DVLA’s employment engagement score was lower than the civil service benchmark and had reduced quite a bit from the previous year. What steps have you taken to improve morale and engagement with staff, bearing in mind also that your turnover has gone up 40% year on year in the same period? That in itself does not paint a particularly good picture.
Julie Lennard: On turnover, we are much lower. Our turnover rate is about 11%.
Q39 Gavin Newlands: So that has come down.
Julie Lennard: The turnover rate is 11% overall. It is around 13.5% across the civil service and about 15% if you are looking at the public and the private sector. Actually, we have pretty low turnover rates comparatively.
What I would say on that is that hybrid working has opened up a lot more opportunities for people who live in Swansea, particularly in the civil service, so we would see extra turnover. I would also say that it really shows that our staff are in demand because they are highly capable, are very well trained and have great skills, particularly in digital. That is where we see it, because there are not many places where you can get the digital skills that our staff get. In particular, we have a digital centre of excellence, where we have invested in digital apprenticeships, master’s degrees and the cloud academy. We have really invested in that and have given people the opportunity and that’s great, but of course they are also very attractive to the wider market.
Our turnover is healthy. What is a challenge is when you have people in very key roles who leave. That is more challenging, but for the other people who are in the organisation, if you want to be promoted, are ambitious and want to stay, you need someone else to leave to open up opportunities. In an organisation generally, turnover is healthy. Here it is much lower than in the private sector or even the civil service.
Q40 Gavin Newlands: I hear you. Turnover, to a point, is healthy. I fully accept that it is low in comparison with other elements of the civil service and the wider public sector. I think that you said that it is 11.6%. That compares with 4.5% in 2020-21 and 6.3% in 2021-22, so it has nearly tripled compared with two years ago. I hear what you are saying about the comparisons, but is it not a bit of a concern that it has jumped up so dramatically?
Julie Lennard: No. As I said, one of the big things previously was that because we are based in Swansea, where we are one of the biggest employers in the region, people who wanted to stay living in Swansea did not have the same opportunities that they have in a post-pandemic world, where there are a lot more opportunities to work in a hybrid way. That opens up a lot of different opportunities. It is also a very buoyant labour market. Those are all things that contribute to that.
Of the people who leave to go to other Government Departments, 80% are going on promotion. They are going for a reason, which is that there are more opportunities, particularly where there is hybrid working. One of the main reasons that people leave is related to pay. Particularly in a very buoyant labour market, if you have really great digital skills and the private sector can pay a lot more than the public sector, that is what happens when people are very well trained and well qualified and have great experience.
Q41 Gavin Newlands: On hybrid working, a lot of the issues the DVLA ran into during the pandemic, particularly at the start of it, were around the lack of ability to do any hybrid working at all, until the laptops were dished out and so on. What further steps have you taken since July 2021 to increase the capacity of DVLA staff to work remotely? With a lot of the paper applications, particularly with the medical side of things, there is concern about data security. Where are we with that? Can you give us an update?
Julie Lennard: Absolutely. It is a combination of factors, as we have discussed at this Committee previously. It was never a question about giving people laptops. That was never the barrier. There were some underlying technological challenges that we have overcome. We increased the number of people who were able to work from home throughout the pandemic. At the end of the day, when you have post coming in, even though we are seeing a lot less than we did before, you still need people there to physically open, process and scan in that post. While we have large amounts of mail, there will always need to be people on site operationally to do that. At the same time, we have done a lot on RPA—using robots for processing.
Obviously, if you apply online, no human has to see your application. As a customer, you are putting that in and it is being taken into the system of record and processed automatically. A human does not look at it. If you send it to us on paper, clearly you must have a way of getting the information from that paper into the system of record. One of the challenges with that is that, if you have paper coming in, someone has to be able to scan it and input it to the system of record. We are using robotics to do a lot more, to give us more resilience and to deal with a lot of that more mundane work. I spoke before about multi-skilling staff and having people able to do other things instead. We are using robots to take a lot of the early data off paper forms and to ingest it into our system of record. We are doing an awful lot behind the scenes to increase resilience, accepting that we will always have some paper coming in.
Q42 Gavin Newlands: We have had numbers previously in updates. Can you give us numbers on how many staff and in what kinds of roles are now able to work remotely, compared with when you answered those questions previously?
Julie Lennard: At the moment, about 56% of our staff are on site all the time, from an operational point of view. There are 42% who can work hybrid, which is much higher than in March 2022. We have increased. If another pandemic came over the horizon, we would be in a very different position. We have made so many technical and process changes that we would be able to have more people working from home. It will simply be a risk-based decision—one, I suspect, for Ministers—around what you do with that and whether people could, but they are not doing so as a matter of routine. In the medical space, in particular, they are not working hybrid now; they are on site, now with data security. If there were a pandemic tomorrow and I had to be able to put more people at home, if Ministers were willing to take that risk, we could do that, but you would still have to have a significant number of people coming in for the paper and for passports and things like that.
Q43 Gavin Newlands: I accept that. Earlier, I touched on the engagement score and so on. Clearly, over the last few years there have been a lot of issues with the trade unions. How would you categorise your relationship with the trade unions at the moment?
Julie Lennard: Locally, I would say that it is pretty good. As you are probably aware, the union has a national dispute with the civil service. That is not with DVLA. We have had some industrial action from that, but it is a national dispute. We are not involved in any discussions around resolving that because it is a Cabinet Office lead. On a local level, it is pretty good.
Q44 Mr Bradshaw: Are you trying to disincentivise hybrid working among your staff?
Julie Lennard: I am not trying to disincentivise it.
Q45 Mr Bradshaw: It has been suggested to us that the way you are measuring clocking on and clocking off for hybrid staff differs from that for those who are in the office and that the impact of that is to discriminate, if you like, against staff who are working hybrid.
Julie Lennard: We are not trying to disincentivise people from doing it.
Q46 Mr Bradshaw: But you accept that there is a difference in the system.
Julie Lennard: I am assuming that this has come from PCS.
Mr Bradshaw: Yes.
Julie Lennard: You are talking about our contact centre staff.
Mr Bradshaw: Yes.
Julie Lennard: The difference there is that contact centre staff who come on site have to be ready to answer the phones when their shift starts. If your shift starts at 8 o’clock, you have to be picking up the phones for 8 o’clock. That means that people come in before that. They sort out their coat, switch on their system and get themselves a cup of tea. We allow people up to 15 minutes before they have to start answering the phone, because everyone does seven hours and 20 minutes for that day and they have to be on the phones for a certain amount of time within that.
What the union is asking for is the same amount of time for contact centre staff working at home, which is very hard to justify, to be honest. If you are working at home, you do not have the travel time and are not having to hang up your coat and sort yourself out, because you are in your living room, your spare room or whatever. That is the issue for the union. They are asking for people who work at home answering phones to be given an additional 15 minutes paid before they start answering the phones and picking up calls. That is all it is. It is a very local issue with the union with the contact centre. It is not something staff are particularly vexed about, but the union is.
Q47 Mr Bradshaw: They have also raised with us the cutting of the staff bus service and whether that has gone through proper equality impact and environmental impact assessment.
Julie Lennard: Yes, it has. We have looked at that. It is not until November. We are working with anyone who is particularly impacted.
We knew about it through the pandemic because we did a lot of work on it. You might recall that we talked about the buses before. Because of concerns from PCS, we ended up with greater social distancing guidelines than the national bus network in Wales, which meant that we had to limit how many people could use the buses. We know that there is a very small number of people who genuinely do not have any alternative. We are working with them. No more than about 30 people genuinely do not have an alternative. We are working with them on that. We are looking at things like car-sharing options, which are really common in DVLA anyway.
Q48 Mr Bradshaw: Is the reason for cutting it just lack of use?
Julie Lennard: It is lack of use. I am sure that national bus networks have had some of the same challenges. Post pandemic, it is just not viable on those routes to run bus services for very small numbers of people.
Q49 Greg Smith: Do you value the classic and historic car sector in this country?
Julie Lennard: I value all our stakeholders. The reason that I am pausing is that I do not have a particular view one way or another. For me personally, or for us as an organisation, we have a role in relation to classic cars, which is around making sure that we have accurate records of the vehicles and can identify them, and that if any changes are made they are still road safe. In terms of supporting them or otherwise, we are supportive of all our stakeholders, whether that is a member of the general public, a fleet company or a historic car owner.
Q50 Greg Smith: I am grateful for that answer. What would you say is the level of expertise within the DVLA? I know that it is a subjective term, but how many staff do you have that someone could consider expert in historic vehicles—in understanding what they require in an engineering and safety sense and, frankly, just understanding the heritage and history of them?
Lynette Rose: We have small numbers in my policy teams who deal directly with the classic car areas and operational staff who carry out the processing of the applications. We don’t have engineers because our expertise is around the registration of these vehicles. Where we need that input, which in recent years has seemed to be something that is a growing area, we use our sister agency, DVSA. We also talk to the Department, where there are people who understand engineering and have the appropriate qualifications.
Q51 Greg Smith: Since this Select Committee last raised the issue with the DVLA, the historic vehicle user group has been set up. What concrete changes has that group brought about in the DVLA in policy, guidelines and interaction with the sector?
Lynette Rose: It is difficult to say that we have produced anything concrete at this point. I think we have a wider relationship with the sector than we had before. We have new groups in the wider historic vehicle user group that maybe we did not have a direct link with. We are working on a best practice guide, which has not yet been published because we have been dealing with a number of issues that have taken quite a bit of staff time over the last few years, but we have been talking to our colleagues in DVSA and are very hopeful that we will be able to reach a position where, at the next meeting of the HVUG, we can discuss progress in more concrete terms.
Q52 Greg Smith: I want to get into some detail of the challenges that I have heard and the Committee has heard. I know that the Roads Minister heard them directly from some stakeholders a couple of weeks ago. Let me ask you a question to start off with. Were I to have a mishap on the road at some point in the next week in my 69-plate car—a modern car—and the garage putting it back together said, “That panel is completely gone. We are going to have to straightforwardly replace it,” and sourced an identical manufacturer panel and bolted it on, would my car have to go on to a Q plate?
Lynette Rose: No. If it is replaced with a brand-new manufactured part, unless the vehicle was so badly damaged that it fell into one of the insurance write-off—
Q53 Greg Smith: We are not talking about a write-off; we are talking about a panel replacement.
Lynette Rose: In those cases, because it is being replaced by a manufactured part, it would not. The difficulty we have with classic cars—I think that this is where you are getting to—is that many of those manufacturers no longer exist, so the parts are fabricated by other areas, which brings into question how extensive the rebuild process is.
Q54 Greg Smith: You anticipated where I was going on this. There are plenty of examples from the sector, which is a pretty big sector. It is an £18 billion sector, so it is significant in size. This is not just a few people in their garages tinkering about with cars. This is serious people and serious enterprise, and serious love for the vehicles that they are restoring.
There are countless examples of panels that have been manufacturer approved to exact manufacturer design being put on historic vehicles and then forced on to a Q plate. Something is going wrong there. There is an inconsistency in application of that. There is a real question of whether the knowledge is there, which goes back to one of my earlier questions about understanding what is actually being done to restore the vehicle. What is going wrong to lead to, first, something in the classic sector that simply would not apply to a modern car, and, secondly, inconsistency in approach even within the classic sector?
Lynette Rose: First, I should clarify and say that it could happen to a modern car if the restoration were that extensive. When it comes to classic cars, I think we are getting to a point where we see many more restorations taking place on different levels. Some of the companies involved in this are experts. I don’t dispute that for a moment. What we are trying to do from a registration perspective is make sure that we protect the integrity of the historic vehicles and that, from a consumer point of view, the vehicles are not being changed so much that if you buy a 1920s Bugatti it is not necessarily something that another organisation might not recognise as anything other than a replica. It is a balance between the rights of the consumer and those of the historic vehicle enthusiast.
Some of the discussions that we have had in the historic vehicle user group have been around the fact that we have to register vehicles across the spectrum, from those that have been done up in someone’s spare time in their garage to the ones that are professionally managed. What we are trying to do is come up with a set of principles that work for everyone.
Q55 Greg Smith: I get your point about something that could be proven to be essentially a replica, where there is nothing original left, or that has even been built up as a replica. Let me give you another example. To the first question, could you answer simply yes or no? Is fitting a roll cage good for driver safety?
Lynette Rose: Yes.
Q56 Greg Smith: If the only application to install that roll cage is a small hole for the bolts to attach the roll cage to the vehicle, is that a major modification to the vehicle that should put it on to a Q plate?
Lynette Rose: It is a modification that at the moment could imply that it changes the integrity of the vehicle’s structure. That is where we are in discussions with DVSA to try to come up with a more pragmatic view. At the meeting with the Minister, reference was made to what a car having seatbelts fitted could mean. That is the discussion we are having now around what really changes and makes the vehicle potentially unsafe.
Julie Lennard: This is a really difficult area. As cars age, you are replacing more and more on a vehicle. If you want to keep it on the road and to be able to use it and enjoy it, clearly you have to make a lot more changes to it than you would to a piece of furniture from whenever. It is a very different thing because you are using it—you are out driving it—and there is a road safety point of view.
In our experience, if you own one of these vehicles you do not want a Q plate because it can affect the value, and most likely will. Because so much has been changed on that vehicle, there is a question mark about whether it is still the original vehicle. Of course, if you are buying one of these vehicles you want to know exactly what has been done to the vehicle, because if you are going to spend an awful lot of money you want a good understanding of whether it is still the same original vehicle or whether so much of it has been replaced that you would argue that it is a replica.
It is a difficult line to walk. What we would like to do is work with the industry to say where the pragmatic balance is, because there is a balance. The people you are talking about and dealing with are inevitably all owners, buyers and sellers, so they walk both lines.
Q57 Greg Smith: I appreciate that answer. I am grateful for the commitment to finding those guidelines and policies. I think the key to it is consistency of application, because there is a weight of evidence out there of inconsistency of application. It needs to get to a point where there is a clear policy and set of guidelines and everyone knows that they are playing by the same rules. Everyone knows that in historical vehicles corrosion happens. You are going to have to cut into a chassis and weld in a new piece from time to time. That does not make it a new car. You are going to have to replace panels. You are going to have to replace mechanical parts. From the evidence that I have seen and heard, there is frustration in the sector that it is all over the place. It is almost like playing roulette as to whether you are going to end up with a Q plate or not. I put it to you that that surely has to change.
Julie Lennard: We are certainly open. This is a challenging area because the stakes are very high for the people involved in it. There is a lot of money at stake, which tends to really focus minds. What I would say is that, out of 1.1 million vehicles on the record that would fall into the definition of a classic vehicle, last year we had 23 complaints. I take your point that to the people involved it is hugely important and very frustrating. We can go even more rigid and say, “This is black and white. This is absolutely what you have to do,” but I think that we will get some complaints around that as well. There is a policy in place, which is publicly available. There is a points-based system where, if you have changed certain things, you will end up with an age-related plate or a Q plate. That is out there and is publicly available.
When trying to determine the provenance of vehicles, we try to be pragmatic. Obviously, the holy grail is to have the logbook, but often a lot of these vehicles have lost it. If the vehicle has been imported, it is no longer there. We are quite pragmatic about saying, “Here are the sorts of evidence that we consider for that.” We are trying to be pragmatic. We are saying, “These are the kinds of things that we would consider, but if you have other evidence, bring it forward and we will look at it.” We can narrow that down to say, “This is what we consider.” We can work with the industry and say, “This is the only list. If you don’t have any of these, it won’t be something that we can register with an age-appropriate plate or the original plate.” It is a really difficult area, but, as I said, we are very keen to work with the sector to get to a pragmatic approach, acknowledging that things change over time.
Greg Smith: I am grateful. You mentioned imports. I could ask a series of questions on that as well, but I fear that I have taken too much time already. I would welcome continuing this conversation beyond this Committee.
Chair: Paul, do you have a supplementary? Have you covered everything?
Q58 Paul Howell: It is not quite related to that subject, but we can cover it now anyway. It is another area that has come across my desk. I understand that there is a review going on into the safety of people buying cars when they don’t actually have a driving licence. The reason that it came across my desk is that we had an incident where somebody with epilepsy who didn’t have a licence bought a car, crashed and killed somebody. I know that it is a very sensitive area and that there are different issues involved, but I understand that there is a safety review going on. Is there any progress on where that is getting to?
Julie Lennard: I don’t think there is anything we can really say at the moment. The only thing that I would say is this. What we have is the registered keeper, rather than the owner. Increasingly, that market has changed. A huge number are now bought by companies and leased. It is done in a very different way from maybe 30 years ago, when it tended to be an individual buying their own vehicle. There isn’t really anything that I am able to add at the moment on where that is and the thinking on that. It is one we are working with the Department on.
Paul Howell: It would be interesting to hear about that when you get something.
Q59 Jack Brereton: I want to ask about fraud and cloning of number plates. Is it something that is on the rise?
Lynette Rose: We, the police and the Home Office are involved with some work that is going on at the moment to try to assess exactly how much cloning there is on UK roads. Anecdotally, the feeling is that there is more. When we talk to police colleagues, that is the message we get.
The number of letters that we get from people who have had parking fines at the other end of the country from where they live is still quite low. It was around 8,500 last year. In each of the few years before that, it was around 7,000. That suggests that there is an increase, but those letters can be for a multitude of reasons. There could have been a misread or something like that. We do not yet know the scale of the problem.
The work that is going on—the research that the Home Office has commissioned—should be available later this year. That will give us a real understanding of what the issues are and how we can work with the police. Obviously, it is an on-the-road offence to be picked up. There is very little we can do from looking at the record because you don’t know which is the wrong car, but we will look to work with them to see what we can do in the area.
Q60 Jack Brereton: Is there concern about use of trade plates as well? I know that fooling the ANPR cameras by using a trade plate has been an issue. Is that something?
Lynette Rose: It is trade plates and it is people who are cloning vehicle registration number plates. They may be doing it in the local area so that they don’t stand out. They may be doing it from Birmingham and picking a Scottish plate to try to hide the fact that they have done it. It is also things like people using infrared film so that when they go through a camera it does not show up. Some of the reasons for that are to avoid enforcement penalties, penalties for speeding and other things. At other times, it is because they are involved in other crimes.
There is a whole sector. In perspective to the fact that we have 40 million vehicles on the road, the numbers look low, but the real damage that it does to the individuals who are affected by it is something that we cannot ignore. We are very hopeful that we will be able to get to a point when we will at least understand the scale of the problem. Then we can look at solutions.
Q61 Jack Brereton: You mentioned a number of other organisations and agencies you are working alongside and in partnership with. Do you think that the level of enforcement is currently sufficient?
Lynette Rose: It is a matter for the police, obviously. They have other priorities, but I know—
Q62 Jack Brereton: Is there any direct enforcement that you would do? Is it mainly—
Lynette Rose: You almost have to pick them up on the road to identify the wrong vehicle. We will enforce if we get a report of a mis-spaced number plate. We do that every year. We send out letters and make sure that customers put the right plate on. We can support a customer who has been affected by a cloned plate, but we cannot actually detect it in the way the police can if they stop someone at the roadside. That is why the police are taking the work that we are doing with them very seriously. I know that the Home Office is as well.
Chair: Thank you. That brings us to the end of our questions today. Thank you again for your time and for answering our questions.