A recent press release from DVLA confirms that Local Office closures are going ahead and will be phased over October, November and December 2013.
It is stated that “Key to the improvements is centralising the DVLA’s services and making more transactions available online. This will make it easier than ever for people to deal with the agency at a time and place that suits.”
DVLA’s Chief Executive, Simon Tse said:
“We are absolutely committed to delivering the best service we can. Our continued movement towards digital transactions and the greater use of other organisations to deliver services on our behalf will make it easier for motorists to deal with us in a way that suits them and also reduce significant burden on the motor industry and other stakeholders.”
DVLA have stated they will use other ‘front counters service to more than make up for the closure of the 39 Local Offices.
“Far greater use of front office services by intermediaries. This will mean that over 1 million licensing applications per year that currently can only be carried out at DVLA’s 39 regional offices will be available via a much wider network of front office services – potentially up to some 6,000 outlets - cutting travel time for motorists and giving them much greater choice of where they choose to deal with DVLA.”
Full Press Release can be seen here.
http://www.dft.gov.uk/dvla/pressoffice/pressreleases/04072012.aspx
ACE contacted DVLA for clarification of by whom the front counter services would be provided and also clarification of who would take over DVLA required vehicle inspections. It appears that neither is yet finalised still.
“Thank you for your e-mail.
As part of transforming the services we provide, we will centralise some of the work currently carried out in our regional offices here at Swansea. But we will also continue to make more of our transactions digital and make far more places available where people can deal with us face to face.
There are already a high number of our services carried out by other organisations on our behalf – The Post Office and motor dealers are good examples of that, but we want our customers to enjoy the benefits of greater choice of where and when they can deal with us.
We are currently looking at who is best placed to do that and at this stage it’s too early to say who that will be. But what we can say is that there will be far more outlets for customers to use. This will make it easier and cheaper for them by reducing travel time, given that in some cases currently customers have no choice other than to travel to one of our 39 regional offices.”