Nobody waiting for a driving-licence decision has ever thought, “What this ordeal really needs is more artificial intelligence.” They want an answer. Preferably a correct one, delivered before the hold music becomes part of the family.
That is the challenge behind the DVLA’s new 2026–27 business plan. The agency concedes that some services have not always met customer expectations and promises a mixture of tighter targets, better digital tools and AI assistance. The technology will attract the headlines. The useful part is that the plan gives us numbers with which to judge it.
The DVLA is not a niche office processing a few dusty forms. It holds records for nearly 53 million drivers and about 47 million vehicles, while licensing decisions can decide whether somebody keeps their mobility, independence or livelihood. A clever chatbot is welcome if it shortens the queue. If it merely writes a more elegant apology for the delay, keep the ribbon-cutting scissors in the drawer.
Medical cases are where the promise matters
The most important target concerns Drivers Medical. The DVLA wants the average decision time down to 45 working days by March 2027, a ten per cent improvement on 2025–26. An expanded online service will cover around 1,600 medical conditions, reducing the need for paper forms, while a redesigned case-management system will use automation and AI with stated governance and assurance.
This is exactly where digital reform can earn its keep. Medical licensing involves evidence from drivers, doctors and specialists, then a decision balancing personal freedom against road safety. Re-keying the same information, chasing paper and losing time between systems helps nobody. Software can sort incoming material, flag missing evidence and put urgent cases in front of the right team.
But this is also where careless automation could do real damage. AI must assist the process rather than become an electronic shrug with no intelligible route of appeal. The plan promises a framework covering ethics, legal compliance, transparency, data protection and accountability. Good. Those words now need to survive contact with deadlines, contractors and the irresistible temptation to call every automated shortcut “innovation”.
Judge the plan by the clock
For ordinary customer contact, the DVLA aims to get average call and chat answer times below ten minutes by January 2027. It also wants 90 per cent of complaints resolved within 20 days by December, tightening that to 15 days by March. Its AI action plan includes Copilot support for complaints, AI assistance in the contact centre, the government’s Gov Voice technology and help with software development.
Again, the machine is not the achievement. A customer getting a clear answer first time is the achievement. AI can help an adviser retrieve the correct guidance or summarise a long history, but speed without accuracy merely produces mistakes at a more athletic pace. The best measure will be whether people stop calling back because the first conversation solved the problem.
The faster promises extend beyond the phone. The target is to dispatch 99 per cent of online driving-licence applications and vehicle registration certificates within three working days, up from 95 per cent in 2025–26. The agency also wants 85 per cent of transactions handled digitally by March 2027 and plans to add MOT reminders to its Driver and vehicles account by December 2026.
Those are worthwhile improvements, provided “digital first” never mutates into “digital or tough luck”. The people most likely to need patient human help are precisely those a slick online form may not serve: complicated medical cases, people with limited digital confidence and anyone whose circumstances refuse to fit a drop-down menu. A good digital service frees staff to handle exceptions properly. A bad one simply hides the telephone number.
The honesty deserves a fair test
Auto Express picked up the agency’s admission, and the candour is refreshing. Public bodies often announce transformation with enough foggy language to make a motorway gantry jealous. Here, at least, there are dates and service targets alongside the AI vocabulary.
The wider CustomerFirst programme began work on Drivers Medical in May 2026 and is supposed to turn lessons from the DVLA into a blueprint for other government services. That makes this more than an internal IT tidy-up. If it works, millions of motorists get quicker decisions and Whitehall gains a useful pattern. If it fails, we receive another expensive demonstration that installing software is easier than redesigning a service.
So let the DVLA use AI — carefully, transparently and with a human answer available when the stakes demand one. Then publish the results. Fewer days, shorter calls, accurate decisions and complaints settled properly: those are the intelligent outputs drivers need. Everything else is a chatbot wearing a lanyard.
Sources
- DVLA admits not meeting expectations and turns to AI for help
- DVLA business plan 2026 to 2027
- DVLA strategic ambition 2026 to 2030
- Improving customer service through CustomerFirst
- Government customer services to be modernised with help of industry experts
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