The Times - UK (2022-03-18)

18 Friday March 18 2022 | the times

News

It is a Wednesday afternoon in Februa-
ry and a training manager at the DVLA
is telling newly hired civil servants
about how hard she has been working
from home during the pandemic.
“I just find it’s hard to motivate your-
self in the house,” Courtney tells the call
centre trainees. “My manager would be
messaging me, ‘Can you do this?’ And
I’d be, like” — she pauses to huff
exaggeratedly — “you’re interrupting
my series on Netflix”.
She smiles and swivels on her chair.
“Or if someone was ringing me I’d be
scrambling to find the remote, like, ‘Oh
my god I need to turn this down.’ ”
The government agency has been in
crisis, with record backlogs in driver ap-
plications affecting millions of people.
Some have been unable to drive for
more than a year because so many staff
have not been on site to process cases.
The problems have contributed to
Britain almost being brought to a stand-
still at times, with lorry drivers affected
by the backlogs unable to deliver food
and petrol during critical shortages.
Courtney describes how over the past
two years many staff at the DVLA —
the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agen-
cy — have been unable to do their jobs
properly. With strict coronavirus safety

that became apparent during my train-

ing in February was that the Covid-

safety rules were still incredibly strict.

Inside the DVLA’s main call centre,

which is usually packed with call han-

dlers and loud with the noise of them

helping thousands of drivers every day,

there were rows and rows of empty

chairs and blank screens. There were

restrictions on the number of staff in

each room, wide spaces between em-

ployees’ desks and high Perspex

screens. Staff were told not to talk face

to face without a screen between them.

The rules were in place even though

from January 28 in Wales the law no

longer required people to work from

home if possible. Even in restaurants

there were no restrictions on meeting

people indoors and the two-metre

social-distancing rule had been lifted.

Similar rules had not been in place in

England for months.

My training at the DVLA was taken

by three managers. They explained

how strict limits on numbers of staff on

site had resulted in a huge backlog of

cases. Its size has fluctuated, peaking at

1.6 million cases in September. It has

since dropped to about 945,000 cases.

In normal times the agency has about

400,000 live cases being processed.

At the DVLA, many driver applica-

tions have to be sent by post so forms

and ID documents have to be processed

on site and have been piling up in crates.

Courtney said: “The problem that they

made right at the beginning of the pan-

demic, the applications were coming in,

they get loaded onto big trolleys. But

they put the oldest ones in the corner,

which then filled up with all the new

ones outside.” She pointed to the corner

of the room. “They couldn’t get to the

old ones.”

Many staff at home have also been

unable to help drivers who are becom-

ing increasingly upset about the delays

and the impact on their lives. Managers

said that some staff had not had remote

access to the DVLA’s systems for almost

two years.

In the first months of the pandemic

more than half of staff were at home on

fully paid special leave, not having to

work at all. This included any staff who

had to be at home but could not log on

to the systems remotely. Reasons for re-

maining at home included being asked

to stay away because of limits on staff

numbers on site, as well as those who re-

ported health conditions and those who

said they were isolating because of virus

contacts or had caring responsibilities.

In nine of the past 24 months there

have been more than 500 DVLA staff

officially not working at all, either on

paid special leave or on strike.

Courtney said that even the call

centre staff regularly coming to work at

the office had often been given paid

days off, instead of being asked to work

from home. “I think it started the end of

December we were having a day off a

week,” she told the trainees. “If you

couldn’t work from home then you

would just get given the day off for spe-

cial paid leave.”

She said that staff were working on a

“week on, week off” rota at the start of

the pandemic to give them “a breather”.

Britain’s centralised drivers’ licensing

system was set up in Swansea in the late

1960s under Harold Wilson’s Labour

government. Staff working there now

described trying to log on from home as

a “nightmare” and the work systems as

“prehistoric”. The main system used by

DVLA call handlers is called D90 and

looks like teletext. The 90 refers to the

Out of office

5 4 3 2 1 0

000s

Apr Jul Oct

2020 21 22

JanApr Jul Oct Jan

On site

Paid special leave at home

WFH On strike

DVLA staff on site and at home

Sarah Evans, the

union leader; the

empty DVLA call

centre and, left,

Courtney leads a

training session

Case studies

A

retired driving instructor

has spoken of losing his

independence because of

the DVLA (Paul

Morgan-Bentley writes).

John Swindail, who uses a

wheelchair and drives an adapted

car, has been made to wait 13

months for a licence renewal.

He has been unable to drive

during this time, relying on his wife,

Elizabeth Ann, 69, and said the

impact had been life-changing.

Swindail, from Werrington,

Staffordshire, applied for a

photocard licence renewal in

January 2021 because this is

required every three years for all

drivers when they turn 70. While

waiting for the DVLA to process the

application, his licence expired.

After failing to hear anything for

months and struggling to get

through to the DVLA call centre, he

contacted his MP, Karen Bradley,

last summer. This seemed to help

and he received a letter from the

DVLA organising an eye test as part

of his renewal. Despite passing the

test, he did not receive his licence.

He repeatedly tried to call the

DVLA, at times twice a day, but

each time would wait on hold

before the line cut out. He said: “It

was incredibly frustrating.”

He has not driven for almost a

year but is still making monthly

payments for his car. He has

checked his insurance and is not

covered without a licence, so has

not felt comfortable driving. “It’s

the freedom to go out on my own,”

he said. “If I need to go out

anywhere now my wife has to come.

I’m reliant on my wife all the time.”

R

eece Bryant, 29, has been

waiting almost ten

months for his licence

to be renewed after

cancer treatment.

He has repeatedly

tried phoning the

DVLA but an

automated

system keeps

him on hold

before cutting

off the call. He

described his

experiences as “absolutely

horrendous”.

Bryant, who works in fraud

prevention for an insurance firm,

has to renew his licence once a year

with medical checks after treatment

for a brain tumour that was

discovered five years ago.

Last year his driving licence was

due to expire in August so he sent

his renewal forms early, in May.

After five months he received a

letter telling him that the DVLA

had contacted his oncologist.

Despite his doctors completing the

paperwork and there being

no medical concerns

about him continuing

to drive, his new

licence has still not

been issued.

Bryant, from St

Leonards-on-Sea,

East Sussex, has

continued to

drive, which the

rules allow. Doing

so has, however,

caused him anxiety.

“The frustration is

the lack of

communication,” he said.

st ten

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““The

tthe lack

communic

John Swindail has

been waiting for 13

months for a licence

News Times investigation

With drivers facing record delays in applications for

licences, Paul Morgan-Bentley went undercover at

the agency’s offices in Swansea to find out why

‘If DVLA staff couldn’t work at

rules at the offices in Swansea, there
have not been enough people on site to
open and process the 60,000 pieces of
mail that it receives a day fast enough.
Crates of post have built up, including li-
cence application and renewal forms
and proof of identity documents, like
passports.
The DVLA has about 6,200 staff. On
an average day about 4,500 are usually
meant to be working, with others on
scheduled days off, holidays, not work-
ing because they do part-time hours, or
on other forms of planned leave. Of the
4,500 or so who are scheduled to work
on a typical day, during the pandemic
usually less than half have been on site.
Many of the others have not had remote
access to the DVLA’s computer systems
because of concerns about drivers’ per-
sonal information so have not been
working properly, or at all, from home.
Drivers are so angry about the delays
that call centre staff coming into the of-
fices and dealing with the inquiries have
sometimes been allowed to work effec-
tively part-time to help them cope with
the caseload and avoid them “burning
out”, Courtney said. At times they have
been on a week-on, week-off rota.
I applied for a job as a call handler for
the DVLA after reading repeated claims
from drivers that their lives have been
put on hold because of delays in proc-
essing their applications for new or re-
newed licences. One of the first things