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Indeed, if we have the full picture, this problem Ryujin has experienced would be an outrage. As promised, under the Freedom of Information Act, I have obtained the DVLA's position on this matter. Here is the full response, less the salutation and valediction etc.



So there you are. As policy, the DVLA does not revoke the licence for failure to surrender a licence following a change of name or address, and it has made public the specific cases where it does. I have not checked that. Although IANAL (I am not a lawyer), it seems to me (if I have the full picture) that Ryujin's license has been revoked by error in contravention of this stated policy, in which case the revocation is invalid and could not stand. I suggest Ryujin (or his legal person) checks out the Publication Scheme, and appeals with this policy, which has been provided to me by the DVLA Freedom of Information office. Demand that they either a) explain the discrepancy in a reasonable timescale, or b) confirm the revocation is void.

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I stole this .sig

Nice work BW.

Credit where credit is due!

Wow, this is quite simply unbelievable. Except it's not, because it's the sort of thing that's all to easy to imagine happening. Best of luck to you, I hope this all gets sorted out!

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-mike[F]
Caught in the rush of the crowd, lost in a wall of sound..

Thanks, but it has occurred to me that he might not be out of the woods yet.

Although they don't revoke for failure to notify an address change, a condition occurs when a person is at a new address and points need to be added, but he or she can't be contacted because the address is out of date. Hm… DVLA could argue that this is failure to provide the licence for the points to be added, but –

a) he had explained that DVLA themselves were holding the licence when the points were set.
b) he had given DVLA information at that time about his whereabouts.
c) later, when they had got themselves sorted out, he had no way to know he had to provide the licence (that they had erroneously sent back without points added) for the points to be added on.

That is a “race condition” that the DVLA system appears to be unable to resolve! They really have no option but to cave in, but getting a bureaucratic institution to see the picture is another thing. For that reason, I would be surprised if there were no Citizen’s Charter/Ombudsman for settling these things. The DVLA only needs the slightest excuse to get in an awful pickle over things. At least with this information act, they are obliged to show a set of unambiguous procedures openly, and I am sure that will help them sort things out in the long term.

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I stole this .sig