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 

The marvellous Politics Home website (www.politicshome.com) distracts me from work a frightening amount, but does distill the morning’s newspaper analysis into digestable chunks.

Yesterday it recommended an interesting piece by Matthew Parris. He writes about a couple of recent logically questionable proposals from the government regarding obscenity laws and clairvoyants. It isn’t fashionable to curb limits on either, and I certainly can’t suggest it on here without wading into a gigantic puddle of trouble. So instead, I will just post the link and let you make up your own mind…

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/columnists/matthew_parris/article4023121.ece

Rick

The saga with the DVLA over my “missed tax payment” has come to an end, with an admission of error from the DVLA. But I am still feeling angry and let down.

Regular readers will recall that a few weeks back I received a very strongly worded letter from the “Continuous Registration Centre” accusing me of failing to pay the tax on my old car. This despite me telling the DVLA twice that I’d sold it. The letter came with a bill for £80 and a threat of legal action.

I appealed, mainly because they were wrong, but also a little bit because I don’t like being spoken to like a child.

And now they have sent me a very terse reply saying that the contents of my letter have been noted, and that no further action will be taken.

Well, how gracious of the DVLA.

So now I don’t have to pay them £80 of my hard-earned money because of a mistake made by their computer.

But of course I am still angry. How dare they send me that letter, assuming themselves to be correct when they were so clearly wrong? How dare their demand for my money come with no telephone number to ring, no human being to appeal to, and no crumb of comfort amongst the threats? And I wonder how many people would simply have paid up, too scared or confused to know that there’s any option? The only alternative is to send a letter explaining the situation, and hoping for the best.

It is a disgrace that we are barred from pleading our case in person. It isn’t on that these computers can demand money off us, and can be so wrong. I am glad I’ve got them off my back, but this just isn’t a fair approahc for a government agency to take with its citizens.

So I am writing to the DVLA asking them to stop this practice, and to at the very least provide a telephone number for appeals. I am also asking them to tell me, under the terms of the Freedom of Information Act, the number of these letters that have been sent out, and the number which have been successfully appealed against. It is shocking that these menacing letters, essentially demanding money for no good reason, should be sent out by this government to the people it purports to serve.

I will let you know the results.

Rick

Another threatening letter from a Quango arrived this morning, telling us that we were liable for a four-figure fine for not having a TV license. A stern brown envelope, a letter with lots of red ink, nasty words and exclamation marks.

“We know you’ve bought a television,” it said, “and we know you’ve not got a license.”

Quite why the government thinks it’s got the right to demand that TV retailers take our names and addresses when we buy a TV is a mystery, because it’s none of their business. But that argument pales into insignificance against the fact that once again, some government computer somewhere has got this WRONG.

For the second time in two days, I have received a letter calling me a criminal, as a result of government computer cock-ups. This one was resolved after a phone call this morning. It turned out that when we moved and we registered a change of address on the license form, the automated machine on the other end of the phone couldn’t make out what we were saying. Because it wasn’t a human being, it just told us to hang up, and we assumed it had been sorted. Sadly not. And this letter is the result.

Once more the government’s computers and robotic answer machines cause me mild annoyance. If I was old or unsure or frail or vulnerable, letters like this would have caused a lot more stress than that. And the trial of talking to a machine rather than a person would have caused more stress still.

So, again, I say, if the government’s computers and robots can’t get things right all the time, and all of my time, their envelopes, and our money is wasted sorting out the mistakes, can we please return to a society where personal details are mine, people are there to speak to if there are mistakes, and there’s a bit more friendliness and a bit less Orwellian madness in the system? Please.

I never thought it would be true that Matt Lucas and David Walliams would become the greatest satirists of our age, but their “Computer Says No” character is about as nailed on as you can get!

Rick