Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many driving licence applications had been received but not processed on 30 August 2020; and what estimate he has made of the average time taken to process those applications.

The number of paper driving licence applications waiting to be processed fluctuates on a daily basis as licences are issued and new applications received. On 1 September, there were 127,870 paper driving licence applications where customers had applied directly to the DVLA, awaiting processing. As of 15 September, this had reduced to 94,920.

The average time taken to deal with driving licence applications received across online and paper channels is 5.26 days.