Getting in touch with DVLA - impossible?

chubsta

Daughter wants to start learning to drive as she turned 17 in June - we sent off an application for a provisional licence in early May, everything was 'in order' and then in late July the status went to 'application unsuccessful' and they refunded the money with no explanation whatsoever as to why they did not issue a licence! So we started again, double-checked everything (although it had been fine first time round...) and did the application again - this time after a week in early-August it said it had been processed - yay! Except it is now early November and we have not received anything! There is nothing on their website to say anything has changed and it is totally impossible to get in touch with them.

I am aware that for some reason they feel totally unable to work in their offices despite everyone else being back to work (I am a civil servant myself and have been working in the office 100% since covid started so please, no comments about how all the civil service are working from home, it just isn't true) but if working from home actually works then why have I been unable to get through even once despite trying to phone them every single working day at least twice over the last couple of months - they do not respond to emails either.

We are currently in the situation where she is unable to learn to drive, which is affecting her ability to get to work-placements as public transport where we are is almost useless, but even more worrying is that we don't know if the dvla sent the licence to us and it somehow has ended up in the hands of someone else who is either quite happily driving around using it or has decided to use it for loans etc!

So, as I am sure we are just one of many hundreds of thousands, if not millions, in the same boat at the moment, has anyone managed to get through to DVLA in the last six months or are we just p*ssing in the wind even trying?

Bigphil1474

I work for local government and I'm still working at home. AFAIK some DVLA staff are still working in the office at Swansea just not all. From the sounds of it, you should have received the license by now. Based on what I've seen, online applications aren't taking that long.

Fortunately, I haven't had to contact DVLA myself, but my stepdaughter had to a few weeks ago, and it took nearly all week to get through to someone. They did sort out her issue really quickly though, so swings and roundabouts. 

Sandtree

I found their Live Chat was the easiest to get through on... cant remember the trick off hand now but there was a way to attempt to directly reconnect with them without having to fill in all the questions again after you get the "sorry we are busy, please try again later" type message. Still took over a dozen attempts to get into the actual queue but meant each attempt was a few seconds rather than having to retype everything which I got frustrated doing so many times. I am sure I posted how I did it here before if you search the forum.

JJ_Egan

Took me less than 15 mins to speak to DVLA .

But yes their is a big backlog at the DVLA and yes working from home for many business and customer support is poor end result .

born_again

Start ringing just before they open. 

sheramber

DVLA have also had several strikes claiming poor working conditions,

Jenni_D

sheramber said:

DVLA have also had several strikes claiming poor working conditions,

For the people working from home, that's their own fault!