IT failure at DVSA frustrating operators' efforts to tax vehicles

An IT issue at DVSA, which is preventing annual test data from being processed, has left dozens of operators struggling to pay Vehicle Excise Duty (VED).

The RHA said this week that it has been contacted by a number of RHA members struck by the problem, which appears to affect vehicles that have recently undergone inspection.

Tom Cotton, RHA head of licensing and infrastructure policy, said: "This issue was first brought to my attention by one of our members - I put out a call to see how widespread the problem is.

"This resulted in me receiving an unprecedented number of emails from operators saying they are having trouble paying VED on recently MOTed vehicles because the data from the tests has not been uploaded.”

Cotton said the number of members ran into “double figures.” He added: "Some of these operators run large fleets so this isn’t just a case of the odd one or two vehicles being affected.

“This could be the tip of the iceberg since I have also been contacted by members of the farming community as well who say their fleets of commercial vehicles have been affected.”

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Cotton said a senior officer at DVSA had subsequently contacted him to say it was due to an IT problem.

“I do wonder if it is also connected to the cost cutting that we have seen at DVSA in recent years,” he added.

Transervice Express Transport MD Paul Johnson told motortransport.co.uk that three of his HGVs had been affected by the DVSA IT glitch in the past two months.

Referring to the first incident, he said: “We tax our vehicles online and when I tried to do so the system said there were no MOT on the vehicle, which had only just been tested. I was really alarmed so I rang the test station, which told me that the data had been uploaded on the day of the test.

“So I went to the Post Office to pay the VED. The Post Office could also see on their system that the data had not been uploaded – there seems to be a three to four week gap before the data gets uploaded.”

Johnson added: “Having to take it to a post office and queue up is time consuming and there are not many post offices these days that tax HGVs – they are few and far between.

“There is also the worry that the vehicle could be stopped at a roadside check and appear not to have an MOT.”

A DVSA spokesman told motortransport.co.uk: “We were alerted to a fault affecting some vehicles on the computer system which registers annual tests, we now have a fix for this.

“We’re encouraging people who cannot pay their VED because of this fault to contact us, and are currently dealing with around 40 of these enquiries.”