Richard Baum

Some time ago I began a battle with the DVLA after they mistakenly sent me a fine for not taxing a car that I’d sold and told them about. They didn’t bother updating their records, despite me telling them twice, and so when it wasn’t taxed, they fined me. This annoyed me greatly, not least because the only way to appeal the fine was time-consuming and annoying, and didn’t allow me any option but to use the post and a long form.

So I made a request under the Freedom of Information Act for the facts on these fines. I got no response, and so after a month I sent a reminder letter and copied the Information Commissioner in for good measure. A stream of profusely apologetic letters followed from the DVLA, but still no information. Today, two days after the second deadline passed, some information has finally arrived. And it makes grim reading for anyone interested in fairness.

In 2007 the DVLA sent out 1,227,047 letters like mine - late licence penalty notices or LLPs. One of them was to me, and it was wrong. My LLP charged me £40, rising to £80 if I didn’t pay within 28 days. I wondered how many others were falsely charged, so I asked how many of the letters were appealed against, and how many appeals were successful.

Bizarrely, the DVLA keep no records of this. They do not therefore have any idea how many people there are, like me, who find themselves aggrieved at being fined for doing nothing wrong. Incredibly, the DVLA also keep no record of how many cases they take to court, or how many of these result in acquittals. I asked them for the numbers, and they just don’t have them. They’re sending out penalty notices with no idea if the people receiving them are really guilty, and well over one million citizens are being sent penalty notices whilst the issuing authority has no idea how many of the people they’re fining has a legitimate problem with the fine.

The DVLA claim that, since people pay the fines, that must mean that they were justly handed out. This is rubbish.

For starters, the appeals process excludes the opportunity to talk to a human being, and involves a lengthy written form. There is also a financial dis-incentive to appeal, because the fine doubles after 28 days regardless of the reason for the delay. So people may well pay just to save a bit of money and make the problem go away. If challenging the machine is this difficult, why bother?

Secondly, the premise that people are paying the fines is wrong. The DVLA tell me that £28.3m was recovered using LLPs in 2007/8. A simple sum shows that if all 1.2m people fined paid the minimum £40, they’d have collected £49m. So at least 525,000 of the people they fined haven’t paid for one reason or another. That’s over 40%. Could it be because, like with my case, the recipient complained and was let off? It might be. I don’t think it was because they were all just penalty-dodgers - The DVLA tell me that there were only 15,000 successful convictions all of last year.

The DVLA should be keeping a record of challenges to its fines through the appeal process it allows. At the very least it should have a vague idea how many people legally challenge them in court and win. Otherwise how does it know the effectiveness of the system? At the moment it can tell me neither of these things.

The DVLA issues fines, but can’t tell me how many are appealed, how many appeals are successful, or how many court cases it brings result in acquittals. And so the faceless bureaucracy assumes it is right, demands our money, and to hell with the consequences. The DVLA could be swindling the British tax payer out of millions of pounds. And nobody there is keeping the records.

Rick