Summary

• The DVLA's newly published strategy and business plan set targets for digital transactions, online service availability, medical licensing decisions, and administrative efficiency.
• Core online services have a 99.5% availability target, while the agency aims to dispatch 99% of qualifying online licence and registration applications within three working days.
• Its AI Action Delivery Plan is due by March 2027, with potential applications in customer contact, complaints handling, and software development.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency has set out measurable commitments for modernising its technology and customer services, linking cloud infrastructure, artificial intelligence, and digital documentation with targets for processing times, service availability, and operating costs.

The agency published its 2026–2030 strategic ambition and 2026–2027 business plan on 19 October, identifying the systems and service improvements it intends to pursue during the new four-year planning period.

Its annual commitments include maintaining 99.5% availability across core online services, dispatching 99% of qualifying digital driving licence and vehicle registration applications within three working days, and delivering more than £5 million in efficiency savings.

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency maintains records for nearly 53 million drivers and approximately 47 million vehicles. Its technology also supports insurers, vehicle dealers, fleet operators, enforcement authorities, and other organisations that depend on reliable driver and vehicle information.

Service targets provide a test of modernisation

The new business plan translates the agency’s wider ambitions into performance measures covering the services motorists use most frequently.

For online driving licence applications, the DVLA aims to dispatch 99% within three working days, up from a previous target of 95%. It has established the same 99% target for vehicle registration certificates requested online.

Both measures concern the dispatch of qualifying applications, rather than guaranteed delivery to customers within three days. Postal delivery and cases requiring further investigation may involve additional time.

The agency is also targeting availability of 99.5% across its vehicle tax, vehicle management, personalised registration, and driver licensing services.

Reliability is particularly important for transactions that affect whether a vehicle can legally be used or a driver can demonstrate the appropriate licensing status. Service interruptions can affect businesses as well as individual motorists, including commercial operators handling large numbers of transactions.

Digital service targets must also account for users who cannot easily complete applications online. The strategy retains support for assisted and alternative access channels, recognising that public services have obligations beyond encouraging customers to use the cheapest available route.

The DVLA has set an 85% digital transaction target for the reporting year. Its previous annual report said more than 85% of transactions were already processed digitally in 2025–2026, so the new target should not be interpreted as an increase from the last recorded annual performance.

Instead, the measure establishes a published commitment against which the agency’s current-year performance can be assessed. The business plan expresses an ambition to increase digital transactions over time, but the precise year-on-year outcome will depend on the figures subsequently reported.

Medical licensing creates a demanding test

The DVLA intends to reduce the average time needed to decide medical licensing cases to 45 working days by March 2027, describing the target as an improvement of approximately 10% against the preceding year.

Medical licensing differs from routine document renewal because decisions may require evidence about a person’s health and fitness to drive, involving information supplied by applicants and healthcare professionals.

Delays can affect employment and personal independence, particularly for people whose work depends on holding a valid licence. However, reducing processing times cannot come at the expense of the evidence required to make safe decisions.

The agency is expanding online notification of medical conditions and plans further changes to its case management systems. Its digital notification service already covers approximately 1,600 medical conditions, reducing reliance on paper forms and postal correspondence.

Improved information collection could reduce administrative delays and the need to request missing documentation, although individual cases may still require specialist medical assessment.

The business plan also refers to responsible automation and AI as supporting technologies. That does not establish that AI systems will independently determine whether a person is medically fit to drive.

Such decisions remain governed by the agency’s statutory responsibilities and the evidence required to protect road safety.

Cloud infrastructure supports wider digital services

Modernising the systems that maintain driver and vehicle records is part of the agency’s wider technology programme.

The strategy identifies cloud infrastructure as a means of improving flexibility and supporting the development of connected digital services. Migrating legacy systems can create opportunities to modernise software and reduce dependence on ageing technology, but it also introduces significant operational risk.

Registers containing millions of records must remain accurate and available while software and infrastructure are changed. A migration also requires careful management of interfaces used by external organisations and other government systems.

The DVLA is continuing to develop its Driver and vehicles account, intended to provide access to an increasing range of related services through a common digital environment.

The business plan also describes work with the GOV.UK app and digital driving licence programme, alongside longer-term ambitions to make vehicle registration documentation available in secure digital formats.

These plans extend beyond replacing paper with electronic copies. Digital credentials require appropriate identity assurance, mechanisms for checking their validity, and clear rules governing their acceptance by organisations that need to inspect them.

The agency has not established that every proposed digital document is already available or legally interchangeable with its physical equivalent.

Commercial users may also need time to adapt their systems and procedures as new services are introduced, particularly where they rely on established data exchange arrangements.

AI adoption will be subject to governance

By March 2027, the DVLA intends to produce a structured AI Action Delivery Plan identifying priority applications and establishing governance for their use.

The work will cover ethical considerations, legal compliance, transparency, data protection, and accountability, reflecting the agency’s access to sensitive information and its responsibility for consequential public services.

Potential applications include Copilot support in complaints handling, Gov Voice, AI assistance in the contact centre, and software development tools.

Those activities have different risk profiles. Assisting an employee with a software task is not equivalent to generating information used in an individual licensing decision, while an automated customer response may require access to records protected by specific permissions.

Operational governance must therefore address the information available to each system, how its output is checked, and the responsibilities of employees who use it.

The new plan describes intended development and oversight rather than proving that the listed AI applications have already delivered financial savings or improvements in customer service.

For technology suppliers, the proposed applications signal areas of potential public sector demand, although the publication does not itself award contracts or establish procurement decisions for particular AI products.

Customer outcomes remain the financial measure

Alongside the technology programme, the DVLA wants to reduce average telephone and online chat answering times to under ten minutes by January 2027.

It also intends to resolve 90% of complaints within 20 days by December 2026, improving that target to 15 days by March 2027.

These commitments will provide evidence of whether digital systems and operational changes are improving the experience of people who still require assistance.

The agency’s more than £5 million efficiency target creates another measure, although savings should be evaluated against service quality rather than treated as an achievement in isolation.

Moving transactions online may lower processing costs, but benefits can be reduced if customers encounter errors, require additional support, or must repeat applications because systems fail to capture information correctly.

The DVLA is also preparing technology and administrative changes required for electric Vehicle Excise Duty from April 2028, adding another delivery obligation during the strategy period.

Its 2026–2027 business plan was prepared before the financial year and has now been placed in the public domain alongside the new strategy. Publication does not mean that every project described was conceived or launched on 19 October.

The commitments nevertheless establish a set of measures by which future performance can be assessed. Processing times, system availability, actual efficiency savings, and the quality of customer support will provide stronger evidence of progress than the number of cloud or AI projects announced.