Government Plan to Close DVLA Local Offices

It has been announced that the government wants to close all DVLA Local & Regional Offices, leaving one Head Office in Swansea. The plans have annoyed many people in the motor trade who rely on their local DVLA offices for everyday tasks and support. The people who will be hardest hit however will be the 1,200 DVLA employees who stand to lose their jobs.

The decision to close the regional network has been put forward as a cost saving measure. Mike Penning, Roads Minister, claims the closures will save the government £28m a year. He wants to encourage motorists to use the DVLA online services rather than personally dealing the DVLA face-to-face at the counter of their local office.

It is clear the government has not thought this through properly. There are many tasks which can not be completed online via the DVLA website. One such task is the application to assign a registration mark to vehicle. There are many other tasks which need human intervention including cherished transfer applications and retention applications. If you remove 1,200 people from the regional network and ask for all applications to be sent to DVLA Swansea, surely more people will need to be employed and trained in Swansea to handle the increased workload?

It is reasonable to suggest that some of these tasks will never be processed online. With stolen V5C logbooks, fake tax discs and dodgy insurance certificates floating around, an online processing system is never going to be able to distinguish between forged and faked documents. The centralising of these tasks is also going to increase turnaround times, with many motorists already frustrated with how long it takes to complete a simple cherished registration transfer.

Unfortunately it seems many are resigned to the fact that it is already too late to save the DVLA Local Offices. Whilst many members of the Public andCommercial Services union (PCS) have protested to try and reverse the decision, most are realistic and believe the plans have already been given government approval.

One employee at the DVLA Office in Colton, Leeds told us: “We’ve no chance. This is just the first step in the process. It will only be a matter of time until they shut the Head Office in Swansea and outsource everything to a private company. You will probably end up speaking to call centre staff in India eventually.”

It seems the protests and objections to the planned closures may all be in vain. It will be a real shame if the DVLA Local Offices are all closed and we lose the ability to carry out same-day transactions such as personalised registration assignments at the counter. The plan is to close each office as the lease expires. This means by the end of 2013 the whole of the DVLA regional network will have gone and 1,200 trained DVLA employees will sadly be looking for new jobs.

DVLA Swansea Contact Telephone Numbers

One of the most common questions we are asked at the Personal Number Plates Blog is:

“What is the contact telephone number for DVLA?”

We also receive a lot of enquiries from motorists who want to contact their DVLA Local Office. The telephone numbers for the DVLA Local Offices are not made public. There is a central telephone number which connects to the Local Office Support Team in Swansea. They will deal with your enquiry and ask one of their colleagues from the DVLA Local Office to contact you if necessary.

DVLA Swansea Contact Telephone Numbers:

Vehicle enquiries: 0300 790 6802
(Textphone minicom users 0300 123 1279)

Driving Licence enquiries: 0300 790 6801
(Textphone minicom users 0300 123 1278)

If you prefer, you can visit a DVLA Local Office in person.

Click here for a list of DVLA Local Offices

Important note:
DVLA is a registered trade mark of the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency. The Personal Number Plates Blog is in no way affiliated to the DVLA or DVLA Personalised Registrations.

Personal Number Plates Video

Auction of Personalised Registrations - Results May 2011

The third auction of personalised registrations for 2011 took place a couple of weeks ago at the Heritage Motor Museum, Gaydon, Warwickshire.

Highest prices:

888 A - £39,500
WA11 ACE - £26,000
15 O - £25,500
1000 OO - £21,500
7 OOO - £21,000
MCL 12C - £18,500
50 NU - £17,500
PO11 ARD - £16,600
1 TWB - £14,500
99 C - £13,300
241 NA - £10,300
83 M - £10,000
UTD 80Y - £10,000
92 S - £9,500
96 P - £9,400

Prices above are hammer prices and do not include transfer fees, the buyer's premium or v.a.t.

1500 registrations were offered for sale over the three days of the auction. 228 registrations failed to get a bid and remained unsold, whilst 360 personalised registrations sold at the reserve price or opening bid.

 The highest prices were particularly strong at this latest auction of personalised registrations. Before the auction I would never have picked out MCL 12C or 50 NU to be amongst the top ten. DVLA again switched the days for this latest auction of personalised number plates by starting on a Thursday and ending on a Saturday. There are clearly some experiemnts taking place to try and increase the number of visitors to the auction venues.

The next auction switches back to the normal Wednesday, Thursday, Friday format and will be held at the Williams Formula 1 Conference Centre in Oxfordshire. The auction of personalised registrations takes place the last week of July right in the middle of the school summer holiday period. Will there be bargains to be had? We will have to wait and see.

Personal Number Plates - Auction Results March 2011

The second auction of personalised number plates for 2011 took place a few weeks ago in Harrogate, North Yorkshire.

Highest prices:

108 AL - £26,000

1 HGH - £14,600

90 S - £13,000

82 M - £11,700

13 O - £11,500

99 AM - £11,200

AAM 4N - £11,000

72 Y - £10,600

99 B - £10,500

1 FJL - £10,300

88 H - £10,100

1111 V - £9,800

BAD 114L - £9,800

111 JCH - £9,200

98 C - £9,200

Prices shown are hammer prices and do not include buyer's premium, v.a.t. or the DVLA transfer fee.

Of the 1500 registrations offered for sale over the three days of the auction, 187 failed to get a bid and remained unsold. 359 registrations were sold at the opening bid or reserve price.
 

108 AL, a resemblance of the name IQBAL was the star of the show achieving a hammer price of £26,000. Those with good memories may recall 108 AL being offered at auction back in August 2008. A quick look back at the auction results post on the Personal Number Plates Blog shows that the hammer came down at £31,000 nearly three years ago. We can only presume that the winning bidder at the August 2008 auction failed to make payment for the registration.

The auctions generally take place over three days; Wednesday, Thursday & Friday. This latest auction began on a Tuesday which caught at least one dealer out. He arrived at Rudding Park, Harrogate on the Tuesday afternoon to check-in to the hotel for a three day stay. He was surprised to learn so many fellow dealers had already arrived and checked-in 'early' when he walked in to the hotel bar on the Tuesday evening. Hopefully he didn't have too many important client bids for the first five-hundred lots that were offered on the first day of the auction!

There is another change at the next auction of personalised number plates which takes place at the Heritage Motor Museum, Warwickshire in May. The auction runs Thursday to Saturday. The aim is to attract more visitors in person to the auction, hence the reason for one of the auction days being a Saturday.

Visitors to the auction in person are noticebly lower since the introduction of the internet bidding facility alongside written bids and telephone bids. It is our opinion at the Personal Number Plates Blog, that it is only a matter of time until the auctions become 'virtual' altogether. The cost savings would surely be very attractive to a government which is looking to save money wherever there is an opportunity to do so.

Personal Number Plates Auction - Results for February 2011

The first auction of personal number plates for 2011 took place in Manchester earlier this month.

Highest prices:

12 O - £49,000
5 OOO - £17,700
1 TWA - £14,000
81 M - £13,000
1 HNC - £12,200
1 LWT - £12,100
KHA 1N - £12,000
1 FJK - £11,400
110 RSE - £10,500
89 S - £10,200
DHE 51G - £10,100
83 N - £9,300
ETH 5N - £9,000
97 J - £9,000
F458 FER - £8,600

Prices shown are hammer prices and do not include buyer's premium, v.a.t. or the DVLA transfer fee.

In total 1500 registrations were offered for sale over a three day period. 118 registrations remained unsold after failing to get a bid and may be re-offered for sale at some stage in the future. 388 registrations were sold at the reserve price or opening bid price.

There were definitely bargains to be had especially if you happened to be in the bidding hall. At several stages during the three days of the auction technical problems prevented the online bidders being able to take part in the auction. At Simply Registrations we were actively buying for stock and missed out on several personalised registrations due to the internet bidding problems.

We were eager to buy 97 ST for stock having previously done very well with two-digit ST registrations. 97 ST sold for a hammer price of £3,300 which happens to be the lowest price for a two-digit ST registration for over five years. If the internet bidders had been able to participate I am sure that price would have been much higher.

Some of the selling prices at auction highlighted how compeitively priced our own stock registrations are. The personalised registration 96 SG sold for a hammer price of £7,000 which equates to £9,110 including v.a.t. and auction fees. At Simply Registrations we have the private number plate 97 SG available at £7,800 plus v.a.t. which equates to £8,880. It may be time to review some of the prices of our stock registrations bearing in mind that similar combinations are making more money at auction than we are asking in the retail market.

There is not long to wait until the next auction of personalised number plates which will take place at Rudding Park, Harrogate during March 2011. Rudding Park is a fantastic venue for the auction and is a favourite of many of the number plate dealers.

Personal Number Plates Auction Results - December 2010

The final auction of DVLA Personalised Registrations for 2010 took place in Warwickshire last month.

Highest Prices:

75 M - £39,000
11 O - £33,800
1 VEC - £16,000
1 TDW - £15,800
GTO 599F - £15,700
1 NSW - £15,500
24 YD - £15,300
11 GUN - £15,200
BAH 7A - £15,000
91 V - £15,000
99 G - £14,200

Prices shown are actual hammer prices. These do not include the transfer fee, v.a.t. or buyers premium.

Of the 1500 registrations offered for sale over the three days of the auction, 209 failed to get a bid and remained unsold. 384 registrations were sold at the opening bid or reserve price.

The personal number plate 4 OOO was supposed to be one of the stars of the show but it only managed to get a rather average sales price of £8,000. 75 M was the surprise of the show after it was bid up to £39,000. Someone appears to have paid a high price when you consider 79 M sold at the previous auction for a hammer price of £12,000.

The dealers continued to buy heavily taking a large percentage of the registrations on offer in for their own stock. It is only three weeks until the next auction where after a quiet December and a slow start to January on the sales side, there could be bargains to be had. Will this finally be the auction that prices start to soften a little?

Standby for the next after-sales report from the DVLA Auction of Personalised Registrations which will be held in Manchester during the first week of February 2011. If you can't wait until then have a browse of the private number plates available for sale at the main simplyreg.com website.