Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what estimate he has made of the (a) staffing resources available to the DVLA to process hard-copy documents and (b) additional resources it requires to clear the backlog of unprocessed documents.

All Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) staff who can work from home continue to do so as office space has been prioritised for operational staff who have to be on-site to process paper applications. The DVLA’s online services have worked well throughout the pandemic and this remains the quickest and easiest way of making applications.

The DVLA is employing shift patterns, staggered start times, weekend working and other measures to ensure that social distancing can be maintained. Due to this, the number of staff who can be on-site at any one time is greatly reduced but the working day has been significantly extended. This means that almost all DVLA operational staff are now working on-site but not all at the same time. Staff are allocated to different work streams at different times depending on where the need is greatest.