Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask Her Majesty's Government, further to the Written Answer by Baroness Vere of Norbiton on 26 June (HL16465), what assessment they have made of the case for introducing a target time for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) to (1) send out questionnaires to doctors to confirm the fitness of someone to drive after having received a request for a licence to be reinstated, and (2) make a decision once it has received a questionnaire back from a doctor, to ensure that the DVLA are delivering an efficient service.

There are no plans to introduce additional target times for activities within the medical application process. The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) dealt with around 750,000 medical cases in 2017/18 and aims to complete 90 per cent of these within 90 working days. In the financial year 2018-19 the DVLA completed 91.7% of cases within 90 working days.

The DVLA aims to deal with all cases as efficiently and as quickly as possible. The length of time taken to deal with an application depends on the medical condition involved and whether information is needed from medical professionals.