Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the DVSA’s target time is for answering customer calls on 0300 200 1122; and what its performance is against that target.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) target time for answering customer calls made to 0300 200 1122, which was set before the coronavirus pandemic, is 70% of calls answered within 30 seconds.

Pre-pandemic, the performance was 79.27% during the period 1 January to 31 August 2019.

The COVID-19 pandemic led to significant disruption to DVSA services with the customer service centre receiving an unprecedented number of customer calls – rising, for example, to around 30,000 extra calls each month during June, July and August 2021, which has inevitably impacted on the time taken to answer each call.

In addition, the COVID-19 pandemic led to increased staff attrition/departures during 2020/21, with the call centre operating with an average of 10 fewer agents than usual. The DVSA is currently undergoing a recruitment campaign to increase to the number of agents, which will improve the service standard.

The exceptionally high call volumes during the pandemic, and the fall in agent numbers, resulted in a performance of 40.88% during the period 1 January to 31 August 2020, and 38.27% for the same period this year.