Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, for what reason the DVLA investigation team asks for the colour of the envelope that applications were sent to them in.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) receives around 60,000 items of mail every day and is unable to confirm the initial receipt of an individual application unless it has been sent by one of Royal Mail’s tracked services. For urgent cases where the application was not sent using one of these tracked mail services, DVLA officials will request further information in order to help locate the application. The information requested can include the type of application, the date it was sent, the postcode it was sent to and the type of envelope used, including the colour if applicable.

Information about the colour of the envelope is requested purely to help officials identify an application quickly and has no bearing on speed of processing. The DVLA process applications in the order in which they are received. No applications are left unopened specifically due to the colour of the envelope and the DVLA has no preference as to envelope colour.

If an applicant does not recall the colour of the envelope, the DVLA will attempt to locate the application using the other information available.