The DVLA has been criticised after a report revealed that more than 90,000 people with medical conditions had to wait more than a year for a new driving licence.
Following a hefty backlog caused by the Covid pandemic, many medical licensing cases since April 2020 have been delayed, which has resulted in 91,000 applications taking more than 12 months to sort. From April 2020 to September this year, 36 per cent of medical licensing cases took longer than 90 working days – and six per cent took longer than 250 working days, revealed the National Audit Office.
Public Accounts Committee chair Meg Hillier said the DVLA was “unprepared” for Covid and “ordinary citizens paid the price” with “unacceptable delays”. Applications could actually grind to a halt again this winter – as union chiefs announce on Thursday (November 10) if DVLA staff have decided to strike over pay, reports the Mirror.
The Public and Commercial Services union will announce the result of a mass ballot across 214 government departments including the Passport Office and DWP. The backlog mounted during a dispute about how to safely return their Swansea HQ during Covid.
Swansea East MP Carolyn Harris said: “The people involved in doing the cases are doing the best they can, but the system is flawed. The way they dealt with [Covid] when it first happened was appalling.
“We had senior managers telling people they had to be in work who were afraid of being in the office.”
The backlog is mostly in paper-based applications – which include people with medical conditions. Before Covid the target had been to deal with 90 per cent of medical decisions within 90 days.
In February 333,000 such applications were in progress, triple the total before Covid, the National Audit Office said. By September this backlog had dropped to 207,000, but most online applications are completed within three working days.
Some people can continue driving while their case is processed. But they must “meet medical standards of fitness to drive” – and the exemption runs out a year after they send their form.
The DVLA insisted “our online services worked well throughout the pandemic”, with more than 24 million licences issued since April 2020. It claimed nearly half of outstanding medical cases had queries waiting with a third party, like the driver or a GP.
A spokesperson added: “Covid-19 restrictions in Wales meant fewer staff were able to work on site to process the 13 million items of mail we receive a year. All standard paper applications were back to normal turnaround times earlier this year.
“There are some delays in processing applications where drivers have told us of a medical condition, but in the majority of cases applicants can carry on driving unless they have been told not to by a medical professional.”
Harris, meanwhile, warned it will be a “travesty” if DVLA jobs are cut in next week’s Autumn Statement. She said: “I worked in the post room aged 16 in my first job out of school.
“There aren’t many people here who haven’t worked there. It’s based in the middle of a social housing area – the disposable income of people working for the DVLA is essential for the community.”
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