DVLA's 14-week driving license fiasco – the tech, people and chatbot trying to clear it
Medical license applicants still waiting months while agency insists it's 'putting things right'
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has introduced new tech to support driving license applications that require medical checks, after processing times exceeded 14 weeks in February.
Transport minister Simon Lightwood told the House of Commons it took an average of 71.4 working days to decide on such licenses in February, partly due to increases in the numbers and complexity of applications. "That pressure was compounded by the need to replace a legacy IT system," he said on 23 April.
"Introducing a modern casework system was essential, but it required investment, experienced staff input and training."
Since September, the DVLA has processed new and renewed medical cases through its Drivers Medical Casework System, which was supplied by Kerv Communications using Microsoft Dynamics 365 and employs decision trees to recommend decisions, according to a disclosure document published last May.
The casework system is now fully operational and on 31 March the DVLA opened an online portal through which drivers can report new medical conditions and apply for new and renewed licenses.
The portal uses email as the law states that some communications must take place in writing. The agency has also taken on 43 more medical caseworkers with 22 joining shortly.
"I am sorry to all those who have been impacted by the delays," Lightwood said. "We are going to put things right – we are putting things right."
He said that the average time for a medical case licensing decision fell to 56.6 working days in April so far. By comparison, the DVLA took an average of just 1.2 working days to process non-medical driving license applications between January and mid-April this year, according to a recent parliamentary answer from the minister.
Vikki Slade, a backbench Liberal Democrat MP who applied for the debate, said many medical check license applications get stuck in the system, requiring help from MPs.
"Unless someone chases their MP, who then chases the DVLA and pushes the constituent to chase their clinician, cases simply stall," she told the Commons. "This is not a functioning public service."
Slade said one of her constituents, Ellie, had experienced symptoms of epilepsy but these had stopped following injections and her consultant had put in writing that she was fit to drive.
The agency called Ellie to ask about this six months later – then revoked her license without telling her, something she discovered a few months later. She was told it was due to a missing medical questionnaire she had never received, then that her original paperwork was lost. She was still trying to resolve it a year later.
The DVLA has found new ways to handle simpler queries, however. In another recent parliamentary answer, Lightwood said the agency's always-on chatbot answered 498,780 contacts in the 2025/26 financial year "without any human intervention."
Its contact center handled 964,576 queries through its webchat service of 8,929,400 in total, with webchat enquiries taking around 90 seconds less than those made by telephone. ®