L

Lord Hendy of Richmond Hill (Lab)

Speaking in the House of Lords on 23 June 2026

Debate

DVLA: Staffing Levels

Contribution

I hope that the noble Lord received my letter of 12 June, in reply to his email to me on 14 May. If he took the simple action outlined in my letter, he should now have his licence and be driving again. There are 53 million driving licence holders in Great Britain. In 2024-25, the DVLA received 837,591 medical licence notifications, a figure which increased to 922,123 in 2025-26. As I said, the average decision time fell from 68 to 56 working days. It recently recruited 60 extra full-time equivalent caseworkers and 100 additional FTE contact centre staff, to cut call waiting times. The noble Lord is right that, if he were to apply now, he would be able to use the newly launched digital medical services platform, which enables far more customers with medical conditions to notify, apply for and renew their driving licences online.

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