At the Local Digital Futures earlier this month DVLA confirned that it would be looking to take forward Local Digital discovery work to unlock council access to DVLA data.
A memorandum of understanding has now been signed by the DVLA and Local Digital teams enabling Local Digital to hand over research data to the DVLA. (Pictured l-r: Jonathan Humble, head of group, DVLA Business Services; Linda O'Halloran, head of products, Local Digital; Paul Jeffreys, customer relationship lead, DVLA)
DVLA has also called for councils interested in joining a collaboration group specifically developing new services around online licensing for taxi drivers and issuing car parking permits.
Councils interested in working with DVLA on these projects should register their interest here: http://goo.gl/forms/TnwQQAMnIK
At Local Digital Futures the DVLA Digital team also showcased new services currently available for local government to use – some are free, some have a set up cost and some have a per transaction fee.
According to DVLA’s customer relationship lead, Paul Jeffreys, “These services have been delivered with a focus on the needs of the customer. Through the course of the demonstration, it was clear that many local authorities were unaware of the new services but recognised that they could deliver significant savings and efficiencies in delivering their business operations.
“To ensure that all Local Authorities exploit the benefits realised by some of their colleagues, I have provided an 'Expression of Interest' form outlining the services available and enabling council to let us know which digital services they would be interested in using.”
(Word doc: DVLA_Digital_-_LA_Expression_of_Interest_230316)
Examples of the benefits that Local Authorities can gain today by using DVLA’s View, Share and Check Driving Licence service and their View Vehicle Record service include:
Fleet driver licences: A London Borough Council has 800 council drivers. Each driver requires six monthly license checks, with copies filed for reference. The checks take around one hour, and include the following steps:
- The driver provides original documents.
- Their manager checks, photocopies, signs, scans and sends the copies to Fleet Management.
- The fleet managers process the received documents and update their records accordingly.
Current cost: Currently the council makes license checks twice per year at an annual cost of between £50,000 and £100,000. DVLA’s new service is free of charge.
Fleet road tax: Ensuring road tax is up to date in vehicle fleets used to be a simple and cost free exercise for councils. Their drivers would visually check the road tax was in date before leaving, but now it will require a digital check of DVLA data.
On London Borough Council’s fleet is 600 vehicles strong, and across England, 152 authorities are of a similar size.
Current cost: If each authority in England had to perform annual checks on similarly sized fleets – at £2 per check – the national cost would be £255,000, which does not include the staff time and other resources involved. In many cases, councils are paying for a service that is now available via the DVLA for free
Added Jeffreys, “We would encourage every local authority to complete the form to liaise with us about using these digital services to deliver significant savings to their administrative costs.”
Completed forms should be returned to [email protected]
