Hundreds of civil servants at the Driver
and Vehicle Licensing Agency have
done no work while on full pay for
significant periods of the pandemic as
managers boast of watching Netflix at
the public’s expense, an investigation
by The Times can reveal.
Most of the government agency’s
6,200 staff were sent home during the
first lockdown but 3,400 were put on
paid special leave without working at all.
There were still almost 2,000 staff on
A man mourning his mother in a
Kyiv street yesterday. She was
killed by debris from a missile strikePresident Putin’s military setbacks in
Russia’s war in Ukraine are mounting,
with evidence emerging yesterday
that he has lost at least 7,000 troops
and more than 200 tanks in the conflict
so far.
The Ukrainian side also says that
it is now counter-attacking against
stalled Russian positions as the
invasion enters its fourth week.
Moscow is having to summon troops
from other deployments.
Russian forces were being held off
last night both east and west of the
capital, Kyiv, as well as in the second
city, Kharkiv, despite a ferocious
bombardment. The besieged city of
Mariupol was resisting the Russian
advance in the south, and the Ukrainian
military said it was counter-
attacking east of Mykolaiv and around
Kherson, which is in Russian hands.
In other developments yesterday:
6 Britain said it would deploy its Sky
Sabre missile defence system as well as
100 troops to Poland as part of
measures to beef up security on Nato’s
eastern flank.
6 Antony Blinken, the US secretary of
state, said Russian attacks on civilians
constituted “a war crime” and that
American officials had started to
document allegations of atrocities.
6 A Ukrainian official said that about
90 per cent of buildings in the port city
of Mariupol had been damaged or
destroyed as rescuers continued to
search the rubble of a theatre hit by a
Russian airstrike on Wednesday.
6 An elite Ukrainian drone unit said it
had destroyed dozens of “priority tar-
gets” by attacking Russians as they slept.
6 A senior Russian security service
official is thought to have been detained
for leaking information about Ukraine,
a sign that President Putin may be seek-
ing scapegoats for his army’s failure to
achieve a rapid victory.
An online monitor, Oryx Blog, which
uses only open-source material to
establish losses, said that 230 Russian
tanks were confirmed destroyed,
abandoned, captured or otherwise lost.
That would represent the greatest loss
of tanks by an army in conflict since the
Second World War. It is also possibly an
underestimate of total losses, put by the
Ukrainian side at 400.
“It clearly is not going the way that
Russia planned,” one western official
said. “Not only is it not going the way
that it was planned, but even as they
have adjusted to a rather more grinding
form of warfare, that is stalling as well.
“That is very encouraging resistancefrom the Ukrainians. We don’t know
how long they can hold out. We hope it
will be as long as possible.
“We know that Russia is trying to
generate more forces to sustain the
campaign and we see signs out of some
quite peripheral places around Russia
and its borders, which clearly was not
part of the original plan.”
There have also been new estimates
of Russian losses. The Pentagon said it
believed that at least 7,000 RussianLarisa Brown Defence Editor
Charlie Parker
Richard Spencer Kyiv
FADEL SENNA/AFP/GETTY IMAGESUkraine takes fight to Putin
6 Zelensky’s forces ‘counter-attack’ after Russian advance stalls 6 Invaders have lost an estimated 7,000 troops and 230 tanks
Friday March 18 2022 | thetimes.co.uk | No 73734Inside today: Cheltenham special plus your F1 guide
Paul Morgan-Bentley
Head of Investigations
DVLA staff watched TV in bed as backlog mounted
paid special leave months later, with no
expectation that they would work, even
from home. In nine of the past 24
months more than 500 staff have not
been working, either on paid special
leave or on strike.
Millions of drivers have been affected
by record backlogs in licence applica-
tions and renewals.
An undercover Times reporter worked
at the DVLA last month. Managers told
of spending working days in bed watch-
ing TV box sets. Staff said they were
demoralised as colleagues on paid
special leave who claimed to be too
vulnerable to come to the office were
“not doing any work yet they are outand about mingling with others and
going on holiday”.
Grant Shapps, the transport secre-
tary, has ordered a “thorough investi-
gation”, saying he “expects quick
answers” from agency bosses.
The DVLA receives 60,000 items of
post a day but there have not been
enough staff on site to open and process
drivers’ documents quickly. Amid
pressure from trade unionists, limits on
staff numbers at the agency’s offices —
stricter than official health guidance —
have been in place throughout the
pandemic.
Civil servants were put on special paid
leave if they were not working on sitebut could not log on to DVLA systems
remotely. They included employees who
reported health conditions that classed
them as vulnerable, staff isolating
because of Covid contacts, and those
with caring responsibilities. Civil
servants unable to go to the offices
because of limits on numbers on site
also qualified. Many DVLA staff have
not been able to work properly, or at all,
from home as they have not been
allowed remote access to systems hold-
ing drivers’ personal data.
Backlogs have led to some people
who rely on their cars for work being
unable to drive for more than a year.
Lorry drivers have been preventedfrom helping to deliver food and petrol.
The Public and Commercial Services
union, which represents DVLA staff,
has said the offices have not been
Covid-secure. Last year there were 58
days of strikes in almost six months.
Julie Lennard, DVLA chief executive,
earned £185,000 last year, including a
bonus of at least £10,000. The DVLA
said its Covid numbers matched those
in the community, its backlog had been
affected by strikes, and that it expected
to be back to normal for most driver
services by the end of May.times investigation
£2.20 £1.45 to subscribers
(based on 7 Day Print Pack)Record backlog, pages 18-
A culture of indolence, indifference
and apathy, leading article, page 31troops had been killed — well short of
the Ukrainian estimate of almost
14,000 but still more than the United
States lost in Afghanistan and Iraq put
together since 2001.
Russia has significantly not put out
an official figure for military losses since
admitting on March 2 that 498 soldiers
had been killed. The Japanese defence
ministry said it had seen four Russian
warships carrying armoured vehicles
Continued on page 3, col 2y(7HB7E2*OTSKPT( |||+=!=