DVLA: Staffing Levels

Lord Hamilton of Epsom Excerpts

Tuesday 23rd June 2026 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Lord Hamilton of Epsom]

To ask His Majesty’s Government what assessment they have made of the adequacy of staffing levels at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency.

[The Minister of State, Department for Transport (Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill) (Lab)]

My Lords, the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency regularly monitors staffing levels against demand for its services and changes staffing levels where necessary within agreed limits. For example, the DVLA has recently taken on more staff to meet increased demand for its drivers, medical and contact centre services. Improvements are already taking effect: the average decision times fell from 68 working days in February to 56 at the end of May.

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[Lord Hamilton of Epsom (Con)]

The fact that it is taking 66 days to answer would explain my problem, as I met all the DVLA’s criteria when I replied in an email on 27 March. If my Question were to have come up next month, we would have been commemorating three months of me waiting to get a driving licence. Does the Minister accept that the DVLA is in a crisis? It is desperately short of manpower and it is not fit for purpose for what it is supposed to do: issuing driving licences to the public of this country, who pay its wages. Is the Minister considering technology to meet this problem, such as putting in place a computer programme to get on with issuing licences, thereby reducing the problem of DVLA not having enough manpower to meet the difficulties it has today?

[Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)]

I hope that the noble Lord received my letter of 12 June, in reply to his email to me on 14 May. If he took the simple action outlined in my letter, he should now have his licence and be driving again. There are 53 million driving licence holders in Great Britain. In 2024-25, the DVLA received 837,591 medical licence notifications, a figure which increased to 922,123 in 2025-26. As I said, the average decision time fell from 68 to 56 working days. It recently recruited 60 extra full-time equivalent caseworkers and 100 additional FTE contact centre staff, to cut call waiting times. The noble Lord is right that, if he were to apply now, he would be able to use the newly launched digital medical services platform, which enables far more customers with medical conditions to notify, apply for and renew their driving licences online.