Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 23 October 2017 to Question 108458, on motor vehicle: registration, whether the number of statutory off road notifications vehicles has increased in the last five years.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) forecasts the full Agency costs required to complete its activities and volumes stated in its Business Plan forecasts, taking into account efficiency plans. Over time the costs of individual DVLA services will change for many reasons including movement in volumes, digital channel take up and mandatory legislative changes. For this reason it is not possible to forecast the individual transaction costs for a year’s time in October 2018. However, in 2016/17, the cost per digital driving licence renewal and provisional driving licence application was £5.87 and £7.74 respectively.

The fees received for DVLA’s Vehicle Registration and Driver Licensing services are combined allowing the DVLA to recover the full costs of its activities. This approach is provided for in legislation and allows a range of both paper and digital transactions to be processed free of charge for customers. For example, the DVLA does not charge customers to change their address on its records as doing so may discourage people from informing of such changes which could impact on the accuracy of the DVLA’s records.