The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (the DVLA) is an agency of the Department for Transport in the United Kingdom. It is responsible for maintaining a database of British drivers and vehicles. The agency adminsters driving tests, grants driving licences and organises collection of Vehicle Excise Duty (also known as road tax).
The DVLA is based at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre (DVLC) in Swansea, Wales.
Data held by DVLA is used in many ways. For example, cars caught entering Central London without paying the congestion charge or driving too fast on a road with speed cameras are matched to their owners using the DVLA database.
DVLA database
The current DVLA database was built by EDS under a 5 million pound contract signed in 1996, with a planned implementation date on October 1998, though actual implementation was delayed by a year. It uses a client-server architecture and uses the vehicle identification number, rather than the registration plate, as the primary key to track vehicles, overcomming eliminating the possibility of having multiple registrations for a single vehicle, a scam known as ghosting. However the accuracy of the data held remains a continuing problem.
A further system, the Drivers Database , developed in conjunction with the Police Information Technology Organisation and delivered in March 2002, enables the police to verify drivers' licences via the Police National Computer, and holds details of around 20 million photocard driving licences. This is an implementation of an automatic number plate recognition system.
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