The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA; Welsh: Asiantaeth Trwyddedu Gyrwyr a Cherbydau) is the organisation of the British government responsible for maintaining a database of drivers in Great Britain and a database of vehicles for the entire United Kingdom.

A seven-year contract enabling the Post Office to continue to process car tax applications was agreed in November 2012, with the option of a three-year extension.

For example, by the DVLA itself to identify untaxed vehicles, and by outside agencies to identify keepers of cars entering central London who have not paid the congestion charge, or who exceed speed limits on a road that has speed cameras by matching the cars to their keepers utilising the DVLA database.

It was intended to deter criminals from disguising stolen cars with the identity of written off or scrapped vehicles, however this scheme was abandoned in October 2015.

[11] The database of drivers, developed in the late 1980s, holds details of some 42 million driving licence holders in the UK.

The DVLA revealed in December 2012 that it had temporarily banned 294 public bodies, including local councils and police forces, for not using their access to the database correctly between 2006 and 2012.

The report said overall sickness leave at the Department for Transport and its seven agencies averaged 10.4 working days per full-time employee in 2005, which they calculated as costing taxpayers £24 million.

[15] In 2008 DVLA staff went on a one-day strike over pay inequality arguing they should receive similar salaries to other employees of the Department for Transport.

It is suspected that this is part of a group of letter bombs sent to other organisations that deal with the administration of motoring charges and offences, such as Capita in central London, which was targeted a few days earlier.

[19] In 2005 the same programme highlighted drivers who had lost entitlements to drive heavy goods vehicles in a similar way.

In 2010 it was revealed the DVLA had sold drivers' details from the database to certain private parking enforcement companies run by individuals with criminal records.

[21] On 13 June 2022, the Information Commissioner published an Opinion in which he stated the DVLA had been releasing the details of vehicle keepers to parking companies under the wrong ground.

[22] The Information Commissioner's Office's website states: "retrospectively switching lawful basis is likely to be inherently unfair to the individual and lead to breaches of accountability and transparency requirements".

The committee found that between April 2020 and March 2022 around 60 million calls about driving licences went unanswered, 94% of the total the DVLA receive.

[24] The DVLC in Swansea is regularly referred to in the BBC political sitcom Yes Minister, usually as a remote and unfavourable location.