DVLA business plan 2024 to 2025
Published 31 October 2024
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Foreword from Chief Executive
What we do matters. It matters to the 52 million drivers and 46 million vehicle keepers whose records we maintain. It matters to the many businesses, local authorities, the police and numerous other government departments right across the country who rely on our data for the day to day running of their operations. If you are reading this business plan it matters to you.
We want our customers to be able to access our multi-channel services as quickly and easily as possible. Our many digital services are extremely popular with our customers. In the last reporting year, we dealt with 95.5 million individual customer transactions, 84% of which were processed through our digital channels. Digital is an area we continue to focus on, and over the last year, we have continued to invest time and effort into building the right IT operating model to ensure that we have the right structure to continuously improve our digital services.
We have just come to the end of our three-year strategic plan and we have a clear vision of where we are heading. Our next strategic plan is being finalised and will be published in due course. The aims referenced in this ambitious business plan underpin our ongoing commitment to continue to provide world-class customer services to our millions of customers, using the latest technology to provide secure digital services that are reliable, quick and easy to use.
This business plan focuses on the following four aims:
- to drive up digital
- to be resilient
- to deliver great customer service
- to develop our skilled, motivated and flexible workforce
Digital will continue to be at the forefront of our thinking. In the year ahead we will make further enhancements to our Driver and vehicles account service, which will benefit HGV drivers, who play a critical role in moving goods across the UK and beyond. We will also continue to invest in our API-first data interfaces that mean we can provide data to customers and stakeholders via our digital platforms.
As always, we will make sure we are business ready to facilitate any changes to cross government legislation, while continuing to provide great customer service by listening to the needs of our millions of customers and designing services that work for them.
And finally, we will continue to invest in our high-performing and dedicated workforce to ensure they have the necessary skills, tools and training to enable them to deliver the services we need for now and the future.
Julie Lennard, DVLA Chief Executive and Accounting Officer
June 2024
1. Introduction
Who we are
We are a multi-award-winning executive agency of the Department for Transport (DfT) with sites in Swansea and Birmingham.
We employ around 5,715 full time equivalent staff.[footnote 1]
What we do
We are one of the most advanced large scale digital organisations in government. We are proud to be a centre of excellence for IT and digital skills and the majority of the many services we provide are available digitally. We deal with billions of digital interactions every year which support a wide range of customers, stakeholders and businesses.
We are responsible for maintaining accurate records of more than 52 million drivers in Great Britain (GB) and more than 46 million vehicles across the United Kingdom (UK). We are also responsible for the collection and enforcement of Vehicle Excise Duty (VED), with £7.8 billion passed to HM Treasury during 2023 to 2024. We generated £276 million through personalised registration sales and transfers for HM Treasury and DfT, making us a net contributor to government.
All those who own or drive a vehicle need to regularly use our services. Our customers rely on us to make sure those services are quick and easy to use. Whether they need to tax their vehicle, renew a driving licence, tell us about a medical condition, change their address on a driving licence and vehicle registration certificate, order a duplicate registration certificate, buy a personalised registration number or register brand new or imported vehicles, it can all be done online.
The majority of our customer transactions are with the motoring public. We work closely with a wide range of stakeholders including those in both the public and private sector. Close collaboration with industry, charities, the police, medical professionals and other government departments enables us to develop services that work for them. It also allows us to securely share information we hold to help facilitate government services and combat driver and vehicle-related crime.
2. Plans for 2024 to 2025
Strategic aims for 2024 to 2025
Our strategic aims for this year are:
- to drive up digital
- to be resilient
- to deliver great customer service
- to develop our skilled, motivated and flexible workforce
| Strategic aim | ||
|---|---|---|
| 1. To drive up digital | Target | |
|
DVLA measure 2024 to 2025: 1.1 We will complete ‘Discovery’ and commence development of a new online service, to allow vocational drivers to apply to renew their licence through our Driver and vehicles account |
December 2024 |
|
| 1.2 We will introduce a new ‘Share my driving licence’ service through our Driver and vehicles account service, allowing customers to generate share codes within their account | March 2025 | |
| 1.3 We will support the Home Office and police by enhancing DVLA’s vehicle and keeper APIs that the police have access to | In line with agreement between Home Office and DVLA | |
| 1.4 We will exceed our total digital and automated interactions | 90% |
| Strategic aim | ||
|---|---|---|
| 2. To be resilient | Target | |
|
DVLA measure 2024 to 2025: 2.1 We will deliver the Vehicle Excise Duty technical changes required for electric vehicles and low emission vehicles which will take effect from 1 April 2025 |
March 2025 |
|
| 2.2 We will develop systems to issue a domestic Driver Qualification Card for the introduction of the reformed national training for Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC) | In line with legislative timescales | |
| 2.3 In preparation for the expiry and exit of DVLA’s PFI contract on 31 March 2025, we will design, procure and commence transition to alternative hard services facilities management (FM) arrangements | March 2025 | |
| 2.4 We will deliver financial performance in line with the agreed DfT forecast accuracy target against the Supplementary Estimate forecast | March 2025 |
| Strategic aim | ||
|---|---|---|
| 3. To deliver great customer service | Target | |
|
DVLA measure 2024 to 2025: 3.1 We will dispatch applications made online for a: • driving licence in three working days • vehicle registration certificate in three working days • tachograph in three working days |
95% |
|
| 3.2 We will dispatch applications made by post for a: • driving licence in 10 working days • vehicle registration certificate in 10 working days |
90% | |
| 3.3 We will dispatch applications made by post for a: • tachograph in 10 working days • vocational driving licence in 10 working days |
90% | |
| 3.4 We will make a licensing decision on medical cases within 90 working days | 90% | |
| 3.5 We will retain the Customer Service Excellence Standard | Retain standard | |
| 3.6 We will retain the Customer Contact Association Global Standard 8 | Retain standard | |
| 3.7 We will provide planned customer IT service availability of: • vehicle tax • vehicle management • personalised registration • driver licensing online services |
99.5% |
| Strategic aim | ||
|---|---|---|
| 4. To develop our skilled, motivated and flexible workforce | Target | |
|
DVLA measure 2024 to 2025: 4.1 To roll out career frameworks across the remaining DVLA professions. These act as the basis for recruitment, retention, development, career planning, talent management and succession planning |
March 2025 |
|
| 4.2 Following the relaunch of our apprenticeship programme in 2023 to 2024 we will work with local education providers to have a minimum of 80 people in apprenticeships across digital, data and technology, operational delivery, human resources, finance, commercial, communication and property | March 2025 | |
| 4.3 We will continue to use our development programmes to provide our digital and technology talent pipeline, working with local education partners in areas such as: • Year in Industry • software engineering • cloud engineering • ethical hacking • software development engineering in test • business analysis Totalling 20 new recruits |
March 2025 | |
| 4.4 Building on the success of the Civil Service One Big Thing data skills initiative in 2023, all DVLA staff will be required to complete follow-on learning to improve their digital skills | December 2024 |
To drive up digital
Our strategic aim is to drive up digital take-up by providing better and simpler services, making it easier for customers to transact with us and to stay legal on the roads.
We will build on our successful and award-winning digital services by continuing to develop world class online services. As the only organisation responsible for maintaining accurate records of all drivers in GB and all vehicles across the UK, we understand that our customers must deal with us so that they can comply with the law. Our focus on customer service is very strong and we have the same mindset when developing services as if our customers were able to ‘vote with their feet’ and go elsewhere.
We will continue to identify opportunities to collaborate and contribute to cross government and departmental objectives while ensuring that we remain compliant with data protection legislation.
We will further develop the Driver and vehicles account, which is a new digital service launched on GOV.UK in August 2023. This has been a major milestone in our journey to deliver next generation digital services, transforming the customer experience into a more joined-up, digital-first service that better meets customer expectations.
Through the account, customers can now view their driving licence information and the tax and MOT status of their vehicles in one place for the first time. Drivers can receive digital reminders for their vehicle tax and opt out of paper reminders. They can apply for their first driving licence or renew their 10-year driving licence. Drivers can choose for us to use their passport photo that we can collect instantly, or upload their own photo and signature. This year, we will introduce a new ‘Share my licence’ service through the account. This will allow customers to generate a share code, which can be used for a variety of purposes including to confirm licence information for car hire companies.
During the year, we will also begin development of a new online service which will enable vocational drivers to apply to renew their licence online through our Driver and vehicles account.
We will support the Home Office and police by improving the way we share data with them to support crime detection and prevention. We will introduce more real time APIs in line with our strategy, replacing legacy data exchange methods. This supports the Law Enforcement Data Service (LEDS) roll out. It will allow police forces to access vehicle and keeper information quickly and securely, ensuring they always have access to the most up to date information.
We are also committed to supporting the following DfT Commitments:
| Activity | Plans |
|---|---|
| Support for life-time of licensing | DVLA will support policies and changes on road safety. This will include continuing to work with DfT on the development of a High Risk Offenders scheme for drug driving |
| Driving licence recognition and exchange agreements with EEA | DVLA will continue to support the work on formalising agreements |
| Centre for Connected and Autonomous Vehicles (CCAV) | DVLA will support development of in-use regulatory scheme and early-use trials and continue involvement with connected and automated vehicles |
| Joint Air Quality Unit | DVLA will continue to act as Clean Air Zone (CAZ) services owner |
To be resilient
A key aim, which underpins everything we do, will be to maintain and improve the resilience of our services, systems and infrastructure.
Our ongoing change programme is focused on making DVLA a truly agile organisation that delivers services quickly and cost effectively. We have already made great strides in this area and we will continue to move away from legacy platforms to cloud based technology. This will continue to prioritise delivering our core functions, drive agility and innovation, and provide high quality digital services for our customers.
Balancing efficiency with resilience will be a key focus. While seeking efficiencies, we will continue to review costs and fees ensuring value for money to enable us to deliver efficient, robust and sustainable services, which are simpler, quicker and cheaper to use.
Our Driver and vehicles account service will be key to increasing the use of our digital services. This will result in fewer paper transactions being received and less being sent out. Through the account, customers can choose digital reminders with the ability to stop receiving paper reminders for driving licence 10-year renewals and renew at 70 as part of our change programme. This will support our wider sustainability aims whilst also aiding our efficiency and resilience.
Our Legislative Compliance Programme will continue to identify digital solutions that meet our mandatory commitments. Following legislative changes in 2023, electric and low emission cars, vans and motorcycles will begin to pay VED in the same way as petrol and diesel vehicles from 1 April 2025. We will continue to implement the changes required to tax this group of vehicles from this date. Our approach will also make improvements to our vehicles IT estate, resulting in quicker updates to our enquiry services and improving the customer experience.
As the card issuing authority of the Driver Qualification Cards (DQC), on behalf of the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), we ensure compliance with changes to legislation. DVLA will deliver a new DQC, to evidence the national qualification, which clearly distinguishes between the international and national drivers qualifications. We will build a new card issuing system compliant with the legislative changes. This project provides the opportunity to transform the current legacy CPC system by creating a new card issuing system and aligns to the strategy of cloud and API first.
We will transition from our long standing private finance initiative contract for the Swansea estate, which will result in all of DVLA’s facilities management services reverting back to DVLA.
To deliver great customer service
We aim to serve the public and our stakeholders through high quality, efficient customer service. Our aim is for services that are simple and quick for our customers to use. We will continue our approach of engaging with our customers and stakeholders as we develop our services.
We benchmark the services we offer through several independent accreditation schemes and use the findings to drive improvements in performance. We retained our Customer Service Excellence accreditation for the 16th consecutive year in 2023 to 2024 and we are committed to retaining the standard in 2024 to 2025. This accreditation provides organisations such as DVLA with an independent check that our customer service standards and our service delivery are of a high standard, and how we benchmark against other organisations.
We will continue to use our user experience laboratory in Swansea to test new and redeveloped services with customers through usability testing and qualitative research, with the aim of ensuring that service design is always centred with the user in mind for existing and future DVLA services. Placing the customer at the forefront of all the research we conduct enables us to understand our customers’ expectations and experiences of our services.
We will undertake qualitative and quantitative customer satisfaction survey research to understand how we can maintain and improve the customer experience of our existing services and to better understand and find solutions to any challenges or barriers customers may have when using our services.
Our multi-channel contact centre provides a high-quality service that allows customers to deal with us in the way they choose. Customers can contact us by phone, email, social media and web chat. In 2023 to 2024 our contact centre received accreditation against the CCA Global Standards for the 16th consecutive year. For the second year in a row, we also retained accreditation for the CCA Global Standard for Customer Experience Version 8. The accreditation assessment recognised the outstanding work and leadership shown across both our Swansea and Birmingham offices. We will apply to be re-accredited against this standard in the year ahead.
During 2024 to 2025, we will continue to introduce new functions to further improve our customers’ experience when contacting us. We will redevelop our two main customer facing interactive voice response (IVR) services and utilise improved voice recognition technology to ensure customers are connected to the right advisor by telling us, in a few short words, the reason for their call. By developing 24/7 IVR services, we will provide telephone support options to customers outside of the contact centre’s opening hours.
Our online services will continue to provide customers with a simple and quick channel. We will dispatch applications made online for a driving licence, vehicle registration certificate and tachograph in three working days.
Stakeholders
Our Corporate Services team supports the needs of a wide range of external stakeholders. This includes face-to-face engagement with our corporate customers to better understand the challenges and strategic priorities of their businesses, industries and sectors, which in turn helps us to effectively horizon-scan future service improvements.
The team is a single point into DVLA that enables coordinated effective communications and provides DVLA with a professional, specialist function that works effectively for our stakeholders. This includes taking forward the requirements of key customer groups into our operational delivery, policy review and service improvements wherever possible.
To develop our skilled, motivated and flexible workforce
Our staff remain pivotal to our success. We are proud of the commitment and flexibility our staff already demonstrate.
We will continue to invest in skills, aligning with the Civil Service professions to ensure that staff are fully prepared to meet the needs of our changing organisation. We will ensure that government and Civil Service values and priorities are embedded throughout. This will ensure that we are fully equipped to serve our customers’ evolving needs as part of a modern, forward thinking and flexible organisation.
We will invest in skills and development of our staff by:
- embedding a new learning management system to allow staff and managers access to all talent and learning activities
- delivering a tailored corporate leadership programme
- using our apprenticeship offering to support upskilling, succession planning and attraction at multiple grades and align to a framework to ensure consistency, support, and management of apprentices and those studying professional qualifications
- rolling out career pathways to enable and support professional growth and to strengthen the agency’s succession planning abilities
We will continue to provide a modern, flexible workplace and will work across the whole organisation to ensure that we operate a safe and compliant working environment in line with the department’s strategic aims and achieve a target of 5,506 FTE by March 2025 through natural turnover.
Sustainability
We are focused on achieving sustainability objectives set for all UK government departments and their agencies as outlined in the Greening Government Commitments (GGC). Teams across DVLA actively engage with the corporate sustainability function to understand and reduce their impact on our environment. We will seek different ways of working with suppliers to enhance our sustainability activities. As part of this process, we have recently increased our on-site recycling opportunities.
Work being completed as part of the PFI exit is allowing us the opportunity in certain circumstances to improve the energy efficiency of plant and equipment across the estate. We are progressing these opportunities as they arise.
We have scheduled work to improve and maintain habitats on our estate which will enhance and increase biodiversity.
3. Supporting the delivery of our plan
Financial
This is the third and final year of our Spending Review settlement. This has enabled us to maintain operational delivery and to deliver new digital services, such as our Driver and vehicles account, while improving our resilience for the future and continuing to deliver the best value for money for taxpayers.
During the year, we will continue to invest in our digital transformation programme, and in delivering the changes required to support the collection of Vehicle Excise Duty for electric and low emission vehicles. We will manage our expenditure within the agreed delegated budgets from DfT, while achieving our headcount target of 5,506 FTE by March 2025 through natural turnover. We will deliver the level of efficiency savings that we committed to as part of the Spending Review, building on the significant efficiencies that we have delivered over recent years.
We will continue to offer personalised registrations for sale and remain responsive to customer demand. We will identify and support the planning and delivery of sales service improvements and optimise our customer experience to grow brand awareness and generate increased sales volumes to meet our 2024 to 2025 income target of £150 million. We retain income to recover our costs in administering personalised registrations services with the excess paid to HM Treasury and the Department for Transport as Consolidated Fund Extra Receipts (CFERs). By achieving our personalised registrations sales target for the year, we will remain a net contributor to government finances.
Commercial
DVLA supports the UK government’s National Procurement Policy in procurement and commercial activities. During 2024 to 2025, we expect to award or renew around 150 commercial arrangements, in addition to our portfolio of 3,000 managed contracts for the provision of DVLA data to external organisations and bodies, to continue to provide the necessary controls to manage its release.
Annex A: Financial forecast
| Financial forecast | Forecast outturn 2023-24 (£ million) | Business Plan 2024-25 (£ million) |
|---|---|---|
| Statutory fee income | 455 | 461 |
| Commercial fee income | 157 | 150 |
| Other income | 44 | 49 |
| Total income | 656 | 660 |
| Staff costs | (231) | (246) |
| Agents’ fees | (87) | (99) |
| ICT charges | (54) | (63) |
| Accommodation | (34) | (37) |
| Consultancy and professional services | (11) | (10) |
| Postage and printing | (74) | (85) |
| Depreciation | (13) | (14) |
| Other costs | (19) | (23) |
| Total expenditure | (523) | (577) |
| Net income for the year | 133 | 83 |
| Resource DEL | 133 | 171 |
| AME | 2 | 2 |
| Total Resource and AME | 135 | 173 |
| Capital | 13 | 21 |
Income is displayed as a positive number and expenditure as a negative (in brackets).
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As of 31 March 2024 ↩