Hundreds of DVLA Employees WFH on Full Pay Doing Sweet FA
The Times has published an undercover investigation into DVLA, where backlogs mean people are having to wait months to get driving tests, and discovered that hundreds of employees have done no work on full pay for significant periods during the past two years as managers boast of watching Netflix at the public’s expense.
Most of the Government agency’s 6,200 staff were sent home during the first lockdown but 3,400 of them were put on paid special leave without having to work at all, figures show.
There were still almost 2,000 staff on paid special leave months later, with no expectation that they would do any work even from home. In nine of the past 24 months there have been more than 500 staff officially not working, either on paid special leave or on strike.
An undercover Times reporter worked at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency last month as millions of drivers have been affected by record backlogs in licence applications and renewals.
Managers told of spending working days in bed watching TV box sets. Staff said they were demoralised as colleagues on paid special leave who claimed to be too vulnerable to come to the office were “not doing any work yet they are out and about mingling with others and going on holiday”.
The DVLA has been in crisis as it receives 60,000 pieces of post a day but there have not been enough civil servants on site to open and process drivers’ documents quickly enough.
Amid pressure from hardline trade unionists, limits on numbers of staff at the agency’s offices have remained in place throughout the pandemic, despite them being stricter than government and public health guidance.
Special paid leave has been granted to DVLA staff who reported health conditions that classed them as being too vulnerable to be on site, said they were isolating because of Covid contacts or had caring responsibilities, while also being unable to work from home.
Many DVLA staff have not been able to work properly, or at all, from home throughout the pandemic as they are not allowed remote access to work systems holding licence holders’ personal data.
Even those civil servants on site have had periods of only having to work either a four-day week or on a week-on, week-off rota to prevent them from “burning out”.
The backlogs at the agency have meant some people who rely on their cars for work have been unable to drive for more than a year. Lorry drivers have also been prevented from helping to deliver food and petrol during critical periods of driver shortages.
Worth reading in full.
If you can’t get past the Times‘ paywall, you can read a version of this story on MailOnline here.
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Yet another total failure of a branch of Government. This is having a real and serious effect on people, some of whom, like the cutting herewith of HGV driver writing to “The Eastern Daily Press”, are losing big chunks of income. We had all the hoo-ha about HGV drivers last year, yet the DVLA are incapable of withdrawing the digit and doing the job they’re paid for.
Mass sackings are justified here and probably throughout government.
I don’t know why we have so many civil servants that don’t seem to do anything.
It seems like unemployment benefit for the middle classes
In the late 70s Monty python lampooned the bureaucracy of the gas board. It was funny at the time, nobody predicted it would come back with a (sinister) vengeance in the 2020s.
The DVLA is a law unto itself. They have zero oversight. As an example, just over two years ago they decided that converted VW transporter vans would not longer be classed as “motorcaravans”, which has insurance and speed limit implications. Just decided that. Changes of classification for VWs went from hundreds a month to zero. No appeal, nothing anyone can do, no need for them to give any justification.
It may seem a minor thing but it inconvenienced many people- I cannot get my son insured on the van we built, for example – and impacted many businesses, but there is absolutely nothing that can be done. Appeal? To who?
I assume the decision is all to do with ULEZ and other scam tax measures rolling out, but we will see.
Oh and the HGV driver shortage is almost entirely due to them refusing to manage hgv tests or updated/renew licences. Parasites, like all the public sector.
About a decade ago, they went through a phase of losing motorcycle entitlement from licences. You’d send in your license to be updated for any reason, and it would come back with category A simply gone.
They would not entertain the suggestion that they might have done anything wrong, since the DVLA does not make mistakes. Even when people provided copies, or “lost” and “found” originals, they still stood by their position: Computer Says No. Even some police riders were told that they’d just have to re-take tests.
To this day, I’ve never seen any acknowledgement from them that there was a problem, let alone an apology for it.
EU standardisation, honestly. Same thing with ‘towing’.
That’s pretty much the reply I was going to put under Fank Fisher’s comment. I sense that almost every government function with “Agency” in its name has taken its guidance from Brussels rather than Westminster. I was schooled in this a few years ago when I approached Elliot Morley, then a minister at DEFRA, for support on a project. He quickly offered his support, and I wrongly assumed that this meant that the Environment Agency would also be brought on board. I was quickly disabused of this notion by wiser folk in the industry, who correctly understood just who set the rules for “our” Environment Agency.
Ding, ding, winner. Yes, this happened when Brussels imposed new motorcycle licensing categories on us, including a new A2 category which didn’t match a different previous category that DVLA had resolutely insisted on mis-describing as A2.
When this kicked in, DVLA lost both their mind, and swathes of category-A entitlement. Even when they sorted it out, they lost the previous licensing history and many riders’ licences now make it look like we passed our tests 2 years later than we actually did. So I can tell insurers the truth about when I passed my test, but DVLA’s records make it look like I’m a fraudster, or I can lie consistently with the DVLA, and pay more.
DVLA’s response to this, very closely paraphrased, was “Nobody has ever told us that any of this is a problem”.
If the whole lot of them got sacked off tomorrow, I wouldn’t shed a single tear.
Wow the 1st bit of decent investigative journalism for years (as opposed to lazy,fearmongering, clickbait).The undercover video the journalist posted will make your blood boil..
Hardly. That was a easy job compared to the one which reveals the most important deep rooted problems.
The report should be mocked for its uselessness ad diversionary objective.
When are we ALL going to demand the deepest problems are investigated openly?
I’m still waiting for the NZ doctors ‘Right of Reply’ to the Daily Sceptic’s recent hit piece.
I’m also waiting for evidence to back up the Daily Sceptic’s assertion that Vladimir Putin branded frackers “as bad as paedos”?
Moderator here: A link to Sam’s reply has been added to the bottom of Roger’s piece
Well that’s something I suppose…
Barely. To me, it’s a sop so (annoyed) readers here don’t unsub like many of us did from so-called ‘conservative’ newspapers when they turned on their readers.
As cornubian says, they’ve effectively burried her response by only adding the link in the original article, and most readers don’t keep going back days just to see if an article gets an update.
I got fed up scrolling back trying to find it. Why wasn’t it given the same prominence as the original feature? To attach it to an article many days old means that very few people will see it.
https://drsambailey.com/covid-19/the-covid-sceptics-who-spread-viral-dogma/
Took me 3 mins to find.
Well, ok, but it’s not really the right way to do things. I still can’t get over the reference to Peter Duesberg being ‘debunked’ (how I hate that word) with a link to Wikipedia. It would be hard to make a more shameful capitulation to the forces against free speech than that. Duesberg ought to be the hero of the Free Speech movement, a man at the top of his field who was mercilessly cancelled due to daring to question the dogma around HIV. Now, before you start babbling on about things you know nothing about, you need to read a heck of a lot to get up to speed. RFK Jr’s book on Fauci is a good place to start and lays it out very well. But it’s long, oh dear, and I know for most people it’s exhausting reading two paragraphs so 500 pages is ‘a bit much’. Ok, then if you won’t read it, then you don’t know. Plenty of other places. But the fact is that the entire debacle over HIV/AIDS was like a trial run for COVID. This site, of all places, ought to be all over that story, and realise and recognise the role… Read more »
RFK Jnr is very clear that he is not entering into the debate about the origins /causes of AIDS and the impact or otherwise of HIV. He is VERY clear on the extremely dubious acts of Fauci and his acolytes and the Pharmaceutical industry and the totally corrupt cadre of PI’s who were given the funding – from Fauci – and did the trials which led to AZT being the drug “mandated” by Fauci – after it was proved to be highly toxic and deadly – which begged the question why was it not withdrawn?
as lDl points out , a dry run for Covid 19 vaccines…with horribly similar deaths and adverse effects.
Duesberg and Montagnier and Lo all reached the same conclusion independently – Fauci buried them or arranged the burial of the findings.
In escapable that Fauci/Daszak/Wellcome/Farrar/Vallance/US Military/US Health quangos/CCP/Chinese military/Gates/GAVI/Unitaid and ALL their funders including the UK government – list not exhaustive – are up to their necks in GoF and therefore SARS COV2. Difficult to “build” a court big enough to house the accused.
Any reason why you couldn’t have just allowed her to publish it on this site?
Good piece of proper journalism. Perhaps the same could be done to investigate HMRC?
Good idea on the HMRC.
We should ask what they think about:
1) abolishing all taxation on productivity(hard work, skill and industry)
2) collecting the economic rents to fund government instead.
What do you think?
Shrink the government and the state, is what I think.
Taxes are there to reduce the amount of money you have to spend on things, so that some people will become unemployed. Those unemployed are then hired in the public sector to do the public sector things.
Going around ‘collecting economic rents’ is just hoovering up monetary savings that wasn’t being spent anyway, and certainly not on the people who need to be made unemployed so the public sector can hire them.
The upshot is that taxes are always taxes on jobs, because they can’t be anything else if they are to do the job they need to do.
Therefore the simplest thing that works is to tax jobs.
“Going around ‘collecting economic rents’ is just hoovering up monetary savings”
Rents are income, not savings.
The public sector in this country is an absolute fucking joke. Teachers, civil servants, local government etc must be laughing their socks off. We need a revolution in the UK and get back to the days of self sufficiency. Get rid of all the wasters – including the millions of foreign scroungers pretending to be asylum seekers, get rid of anyone who is alien to our culture and start forcing those who take no part in furthering the cause to train and work – no work, no benefits.
I like your idea a lot. To do this what would be required. That is, how do you propose we get rid of all the wasters. And how would you feel if it turned out, you, are one of the wasters to some extent?
This is not a jab at you personally. I’m deadly serious. Every household in the nation and in all nations, is to some extent a ‘waster. Yet, not one single one of those households will confess to this.
So how do you propose we start on what is an excellent idea?
I think they were branded ‘useless eaters’.
Remove all benefits after six months for a start
“To do this what would be required. That is, how do you propose we get rid of all the wasters.”
That’s simple. You offer a living wage job to anybody who wants it working for the local council.
Then you move people from the pointless higher paid jobs to the living wage jobs.
Everybody then gets the living wage – as long as they turn up to work and do something. But if you want more you have to do something actually useful and productive.
Elaborating on my earlier comment a little: It would also be perfectly ok to pay them less because other things are taken care of in a different way. Eg, it’s surely reasonable to expect people with no other way of paying for a place to live to live in barracks, wear uniforms and follow some basic military-style discipline. All without intentionally making them miserable through this, obviously. The idea would be to provide a sensibly structured life to those who – for a variety of reason – are temporarily or permanently incapable of doing this themselves.
And who decides whether they are capable or not?
The people themselves, obviously. If they can get by in another, non-criminal way, they can just do that. Otherwise, they can get support from the state to the degree they need it. But in return for that, they also have to be available if there’s work for them to do. And abominations like slum landlords making a handy amount of money from housing benefit simply wouldn’t exist.
Would you put any restrictions on the work they have to be available to do? In some places, prostitution is legal – and classified as work.
If you believe a sensible way the state could employ people to get necessary work done is rent them out as prostitutes, I hope I’ll never have the mispleasure to come under control of anything you’re even remotely involved with.
If you believe that of me specifically or mankind in general, someone should really teach a bit about common decency, ie, that’s the same, only projected onto others.
I asked if you would put any restrictions on the work people have to be available to do.
I then pointed out a legal fact – pretty obviously as something that might make an absence of restrictions a serious problem.
Sounds like a plan. But who decides what’s being done is useful and productive?
I’ve seen useful and productive people lose their jobs and useless and unproductive ones get promoted.
Whatever it takes so that those “refugees” who are male, single and under 40 for example do not think that the UK is “the land of free money” as was famously admitted by one such “refugee” some years ago.
Genuine refugees, especially with children, not included in the above.
Despite rumours to the contrary, the present-day British welfare state is so niggardly that its really true to its workhouse roots. Eg, JSA is presently £74.70 per week. In contrast to this, the minimum unemployed people in Germany get from the state – and this includes unemployed asylum seekers – is £94.12 per week. This is generally considered to be to little to have an even remotely decent life despite German prices are seriously lower than in the UK. Hence, you won’t find many foreign scroungers pretending to be asylum seekers in the UK. It simply doesn’t pay. People are usually on benefits because they have no work. No work, no benefits has generally two effects: People are made to do useless stuff in order to occupy them with something. Eg, the river in the town I was born in used to be lined with beautiful trees which were hundreds of years old. These were all cut down within a couple of days just so people on benefits had some work to do. Insofar there’s real work for them to do, wage depression. Nobody’s going to pay someone to do some necessary work when he can also get workers for… Read more »
“Hence, you won’t find many foreign scroungers pretending to be asylum seekers in the UK. It simply doesn’t pay.”
So why are tens of thousands crossing the Channel?
If they are – and I very much doubt that – certainly not because of the British welfare state. They can get more of everything more easily in Germany (where this is indeed a problem).
“and I very much doubt that”
You probably haven’t noticed what’s going on in Ukraine.
You probably haven’t noticed that people fleeing the war in Ukraine will reach Germany before the UK. Also, defining woman and children fleeing a war (men below 60 are not allowed out of the country as they’re supposed to fight if necessary) as foreign scroungers pretending to be asylum seekers is seriously rich. Finally tens of thousands would be a dozen or so channel ferries completely full of them. Are you sure you believe in that?
There were 400 on Tuesday.
Multiplied by the number of days in a year that’s definitely in the tens of thousands.
I’ve come to the conclusion that you’re an idiot.
And that your English is nowhere near as good as you think it is.
GPs are basically WFH, councils, except binmen, a lot of the uncivil service. RTM members are usually on strike …
UBI declared in DVLA!
Acronym lovers delighted says press release.
Except UBI and DVLA are examples of initialism, not acronyms
The DVLA is essentially workfare for Swansea. The half of them who deal with VED could be done away with overnight, remaining revenue neutral with a small bump in fuel duty, or a tax on tyres which would be a reasonable proxy for actual road use.
In my contacts with them, I have yet to find any DVLA employee who actually knows the laws and regulations. One chap expressed incredulous disbelief when I explained how motorcycle licensing categories actually work, with reference to the statues. He had formed a firm belief that DVLA could create new licence categories by fiat. And their beliefs then become reality – you can’t ask to speak to a grown up.
Like so many departments in Central Services, they are literally above the law.
Half the UK economy now is public sector. I think its more than half now. ‘Public Sector’ is not just the wealth transfer from producers to public sector deep pockets. It’s also the enormous economic rents drained from productivity, but collected privately, too. About half and half. Research the meaning of the term ‘economic rent’ for further analysis. But don’t stop at the fake info on Wikipedia. Go deep. Very deep, else you will be duped, especially by the academies of learning. So this means an inevitable recession, when we cross the line where the economy can no longer bear the draining of productivity into un-productivity. This is always the root cause of recessions, proper ones like 2008, 89 and 74 etc. What else could cause them than that the productive part of the economy is being drained by the non productive? It doesnt even need one to follow the science, its school child stuff. The big Q is: will the people own up and confess that WE are the problem. Rather than whomever the blame most easily sticks to. The Banks, Oil, Trump, Putin, Communisits, Fascists, Nazi’s, The Woke etc) When will we do this do you think? Are… Read more »
Zeno of Citium talked of the Worthwhile versus the Worthless…
Who with any self-respect or sense of purpose could lie in bed watching Netflix movies?
|From the future:
“What did you do when there was this terrible pandemic, Grandad?”
“Oh, you will admire Grandad. I really made a difference. I took full advantage of the vastly overhyped pandemic, while the taxpayer forked out for my wages. I lay in my pyjamas ‘sheltering watching box sets, as I was vulnerable, and put on four stone. Sometimes I got up and put on shapeless jogging bottoms, and slumped on the sofa. It was one of the best years of my life.
“Ah, so I guess you ‘counselled ignoble ease and peaceful sloth. Not peace, Grandad.’ ”
“Where did you get such strange words from?”
“I was in the middle of reading ‘Paradise Lost’ by Milton, Grandad.”
“Bit pretentious, isn’t it? Don’t you know this family is atheist, boy? And we don’t do heavy stuff. I don’t believe in all that nonsense….”
“That’s obvious, Grandad..”
I think those people who are on the verge of mental health problems. Rather than lacking self respect, which is more likely to be an effect of the former.
Perhaps a proper analysis of what is at the root of that is required.
Great idea. Let’s classify laziness as a mental health problem and those who suffer it as vulnerable.
Then we can expand the health service further, hire an army of psychologists, social workers, managers etc to deal with this newly identified mental disorder.
I mean this is basically the approach to things that is bringing our society to the verge of collapse. Let’s just keep going.
When the Government is corrupt and useless, then the people will become corrupt and useless in turn. Why would they do any different?
Anyone who has lived in a corrupt country like Nigeria, the Soviet Union, Vietnam or Indonesia will quickly recognize the pattern.
That is our present reality, and, I’m afraid, our future.
Working in public services is very difficult and particularly so for those who arrive there after some years in the private sector.
There are some good and decent people working in public service but they tend to be ground down by a surfeit of lazy mediocrity. Standing up for yourself, insisting on working to proper standards simply results in the wagging finger.
Public service is practically an oxymoron. The whole industry is Orwellian and dysfunctional.
I think the famous saying you use by Menken?, you’ve paraphrased inverted.
He said “when the people have become corrupt, the worst will rise to the top”
The psychic inversion of meaning is not an insignificant mistake. It signals a powerful but unconscious urge in most people to ‘project’ the dark side deep down onto something in the outside world.
WE are the problem. Because we elected every idiot in government under the democratic rules we all agreed to prior to election. Then we complain about whomever we already elected. Then we have another election and repeat the process. For a boomer this will have happened 5-10 times already.
So WE are the solution. But who will be the brave one to make a stand and say it.
This One will be far braver than a devout sceptic, anti vaxxer, pro trumper/brexiteer and sergeant of woke exploiting those they claim to be here to save(once again by projection).
Far far braver than these minnows.
Thoughts?
It’s more the Communist dance routine of “You pretend to pay us, we pretend to work”. The UK government has made the same absurd micro-managing rules (what is a ‘substantial’ meal enabling alcohol to be served) as you might have found in Russia or Albania in the 1980s.
The aim is not to guide and protect but to be arbitrary and degrading. People know these rules are absurd, yet they comply. Same as under Communism, people understand that under a corrupt system, there is no point in trying to live an honourable life. Better (easier, rather) to be corrupt and compliant.
Can I see the contract you think I signed! I only registered to vote because they threatened me with a £1000 fine if I didn’t, coercion voids the contract in law.
Whatever they do they do it themselves. Not in my name!
You have to fill out a census, you don’t have to be on the electoral role do you? Or at least you didn’t have to be… I always was cause I didn’t want it to drag down my ‘credit score’, but I felt that I had the choice.
Registration is mandatory pursuant to section 23 of the Representationof the People (England and Wales) Regulations 2001 (No. 341) andviolators are liable on summary conviction and face a maximum fine of £1,000. I sent them this email: Dear Sir, How can this be an ‘invitation’ to register if there is a threat of financial extortion attached? e.g. I invite you to register on my list of jobsworths, if you don’t register I reserve the right to fine you £80 – obviously this is logically ridiculous, and legally unenforsable. Any contract entered into under duress is legally void. This is the reply: Thank you for your reply unfortunately I cannot help you with your comments and have now sent on your reply to the next level of management. I have also attached a link which gives you a full explanation on what we have to follow in the process of encouraging households to register. I have also put the link on the civil penalty process which you mainly refer to in your reply, although I would suggest you read the whole registration process which should then give you a better understanding of the electoral registration system. Needless to say I didn’t… Read more »
No wonder tax is at its highest for generations.
I don’t blame DVLA. This must be laid entirely at the door of No10.
Johnson and his Reset Gang must go.
How certain are you that at least a part of the blame lies on your own doorstep?
How so?
Nah. I blame firstly the skivers in the DVLA and then the general population that systematically brays for more public services, regulation and state mandated solutions to problems.
The crap performance of the public sector has been a fact of life since the late 1970s, coincidental with the rise of unions power
Wherever you go, there’s a byzantine system of paper, licences and other bumph. In my commercial fishing days, we had to deal with MCA over vessel safety, firefighting, survival and other “tickets”, then MAFF for fishing licences, and the Registrar of Shipping & Seamen (Cardiff, naturally), for vessel licensing. At the back of this were boatbuilders certificates, stability tests, and a host of other bits of paper. EU tentacles reached into this as well, and the whole procedure was, for years, topped off by having Gummer as the local MP, as well as MAFF Minister for several tiresome years (Cordelia and the Mad Cow Burger days).
It’s jobsworths all round, forget bonfires of paperwork and rules, and make the public pay for these charades.
It’s just a mob protection racket, the most organised of crime.
Absolutely agreed.
We are slaves. And we all accept the strongest gang to pay our protection to. Normalised by the unjust law we pay so much respect to.
Our ship got seconded to “fishery protection” in the 80’s, the MAFF officer was a complete pompous arse, he almost got filled in a number of times. Evey time we went out to board a vessel, I made sure he had a leaky survival suit, and drove the gemini so he’d get piss wet thru, we had a competition between us to see who could make him fall in the most, I’m not saying what the chefs did to his breakfast, but I’m surprised he made if off alive!
Seemed to be a lot of dodgy stuff going on with Spanish beam trawlers and Russian factory ships, but we never boarded those, some poor sod out of Brixham got prosecuted for removing a faulty engine limiter, it all seemed a bit of a farce to us.
Over regulation is in every aspect of business now, doesn’t matter what sector, I’ve come to believe they don’t want anyone to have independance from either gov or multinationals.
I think the clue is in who
ramps upprepares the regulation- that’s right, the Civil Service; it is in their best interests to expand the scope of the Public Sector because it is their self fulfilling mission in life. It is the archetypal Yes Minister plot as described in a tortuous speech by Sir Humphrey, if it was not so bloody serious.The Public sector is unsustainable at its current rate of expansion – not just the organs but how the PS dictates through red tape how the “rest of us” have to comply. But it is very difficult to see how that will change as it must; “Turkeys don’t vote for Thanksgiving or Christmas”.
The work ethic in the public sector is shocking. Not on an individual basis as I am sure there are a number (probably small) who are diligent and hard working. But on an institutional level it is shocking. Institutional Laziness anyone (after all if we can have ‘institutional racism’ why not anything else?) The divergence between the attitude to work between the public and private sector is huge and here lies the problem. Everyone in the private sector knows that they bring in income (either directly or indirectly) for their employer. And that income is correlated with the quality of work they do. And on the back of that they get paid. If they dont contribute more than they cost then their job is untenable and they are made redundant. This has been lost sight of in the public sector where the money flows in regardless of the quality of work, and so any employee has no incentive to work properly (other than their own professional pride which in most cases is lacking). Its that mind set that needs to change and the entire public sector be re-educated to learn that the money only flows in if the job is… Read more »
How do you account for the portion of the economy your own household steals from the productive part of the economy.
This is not a jab at you personally. I’m deadly serious.
Have you ever looked at your household economy and confessed to the parts of it which constitute the same kind of robbery? Seriously?
No idea why the downtick has been given to you with no comment. The public sector have been ignorant of the work ethic for decades. My niece had an interim job in London after graduating from university some 17 years ago – she was told that she was working far too quickly and had to slow down, My wife has just taken a payroll position with a business that used to be part of the council – there is overstaffing, useless HR (staff and systems), the line managers don’t do their jobs properly, over £90k in overpayments to employees as their departure from the business was never recorded with HR or payroll….And I have paid Council Tax for years to cover this gross incompetence.
Absolutely correct.
What few understand is that ‘public services’ are monsters of infinity.
Every public sector employee will tell you they have too much work and they need help. Assistance is duly recruited, even if there is insufficient work the assistant will be “busy.” And so it goes on.
Every public sector organisation has the potential for unlimited growth from its inception and because the public sector loves targets it will always seek to meet them.
The reason being that they do not have a single strand of productive working DNA in their bodies. They realise that they will always have the taxpayers’ teat on which to suckle so why bother to concern themselves with being more productive or looking to save money?
I suspect it’s not just the DVLA but all Govt Departments.
I’ve been trying to buy a flat – repossessed by the Child Support Agency (in 2019) – for TWO F***ING YEARS 😡The lazy f***ers take MONTHS to respond to any enquiry. 😡It would have been better if the f***ers had never repossessed the flat but let the poor guy who used to own it ( whom I’ve known for years – he desperately wants me to buy the flat by the way as he’s still on the hook for the mortgage ! ) – that way he would have somewhere to meet his child rather than being homeless which would be MUCH better for all concerned.
( As an aside so much mortgage interest has accrued that the CSA will get FA anyway – thus making their trumpeted triumph in this unusual case completely f***ing pointless)
Makes my piss boil 😡It seems that part of the breakdown of Western Society which we’re all watching slowly collapse around our ears is a Kafkaesque slow-mo “Death By Bureaucracy” where the Bureaucrats do NOTHING 😡</rant>
Lets not also forget that anybody attempting to re-mortgage now compared to buying is also being penalised with their LTV as the Land Registry are also 13months behind on (I paraphrase here) updating previous sold prices which lenders use to calculate their valuations.
So whilst house prices are rising by double figure percentages, a ‘desktop’ mortgage valuation will most probably be lower than the list or sale price.
Any mortgage valuation challenges go back to a very flawed process whereby the second opinion is actually the same entity who did the initial valuation, undertaking the second.
So if you hope to drop an LTV bracket or two on re-mortgage, saving maybe £30-40pm to help with inflation, you’re up the creek. Especially now the base rate is rising. The state has failed.
Indeed. And there’s another issue which is that – by the way my broker tells me it can take up to EIGHTEEN MONTHS for LandReg to register a sale now – unless a recent sale for your property of interest is actually registered with LandReg trying to either Buy / Sell / Remortgage is much harder unless you can get Solicitor Assurances etc .
there have been cases where LandReg have been so slow in registering correct title that it’s been possible for Fraudsters to claim title then “Sell” a house they don’t own to someone else !
I know I keep banging on about the collapse of Western Society but i think we are seeing it. We’re going to be like a tinpot third world state soon at this rate.
… as an Aside – we all know the state is massively bloated and most jobs are pointless. It’s a shame that NO-ONE is doing their job in DVLA but hey ho.
I recently listened to the Audio. Book version of “Bullshit Jobs” by David Graeber and it made me make peace with a lot of the cognitive dissonance I’ve suffered over the years regarding why some people get ahead despite being useless f***wits.
https://agreatread.co.uk/bullshit-jobs-the-rise-of-pointless-work-and-what-we-can-do-about-it-9780141983479/
What a coincidence.
Just got back from a visit to the local council – had to drop some documents in for my mother-in-law who is disabled – I haven’t been to the council in years and usually the place is packed and busy (which is why I avoid it) – today though it was practically empty with just one person behind the reception desk. I asked where a ‘certain department‘ was in the building and explained that I just had to drop a few documents off – ‘You’ll be lucky‘ he replied ‘That (‘certain department’) hasn’t been open properly for the last couple of years – staff shortage – most are working from home and others are on special leave due to covid‘. With that I was about to turn and leave when he offered to take the documents himself and said that he would try and get something sorted out for my mother-in-law but it may take a few days due to the lack of staff.
I handed the the documents over – he put them in a big envelope – wrote the name of the ‘certain department‘ on it and that was that.
DVLA? WFH? Sweet FA? WTF!
This reminds me again of the 1970s. Plenty of this kind of thing was going on within nationalised industries.
When I started work in the 1970s having a job within the civil service was known for being an easy ride. We’ve clearly gone full circle.
Off topic but according to the Guardian they have run out of coffins in Hong Kong due to the non killer virus. They have to keep pedalling their fear porn and I bet if there is a shortage of coffins it’s due to supply chain issues.
Nice work if you can’t get it….
Golly, gee! I sure hope this latest motoring ballache doesn’t mean fewer people are able/willing to use their cars on the road. Good job fuel is heading toward the GDP of a pacific island per litre – it means even if we wanted to drive, we can’t afford to. The loss of personal motorised transport is better for the Second Great Leap Forward, and so much less stress for us lowly worker drones. Another Win/Win for the global Gretagov.
The Times undercover journalists have really excelled themselves with this ultra low hanging DVLA fruit. ‘Lazy public servants watch Netflix from home’ soaraway, phew what a scorcher scoop.
Guess the in-depth, no holds barred, deep dive into the Roche / Gates / GAVI / WHO crime cartel will have to wait until the shockwaves stop reverberating around the world from this parish magazine ‘divide and rule’ diversion.
Pitiful stuff.
Let’s cut out the middleman and ship newspapers direct to fish and chip shops.
Booster anyone?
Don’t forget Schwab and the WEF…
Couldn’t agree more, OPP.
Let’s expose lazy public servants and then swap stories about them and why we can’t stand them. Top effort from The Times. Bravo – and thanks for sharing.
Eagerly await the exposure of corporate criminality on a global scale, aided and abetted by government ministers using public funds.
One point that doesn’t seem to have attracted too much attention in these comments is the difficult working conditions for those staff who have actually remained at their desks.
Whilst the DVLA’s management and the trade unions are no doubt having a lovely time working from home, just think for a moment about those (relatively junior) staff who still have have had to come into the office, wear masks throughout their entire shifts, sit shivvering because various “experts” have recommended leaving the windows open throughout the winter, and cover the roles of their absent colleagues.
In a similar vein, my wife will shortly be leaving her job at our local hospital trust because she, along with a hard-core of other adminstrative staff, have been working in pretty awful conditions to facilitate more senior members of staff getting to spend more time on their Peletons.
The DVLA has always been pretty crap, but it’s not suprising that the staff are getting a bit uppity at the moment.
The public sector – don’t you just love it?
I know a computer contractor who was working at DoT Headquarters last year. He was documenting procedures for computer systems.
In the year before he had been brought in, the DoT team on the job had created one document (which had not been completed). In the two months he was there he completed eight. Then they sacked him on the spot for ‘inappropriate language’. He had used the word ‘masculine’ to describe a statement…..
Has transport minister Grant Shapps had anything to say about this over the past two years? I don’t recall it.
I suggest that we each email our respective MPs with a link to this article. Referring also to the numerous letters that have appeared virtually every week in the Daily Telegraph.
And we ask questions like:
This is not intended to be a complete list.
People’s lives are being wrecked by this incompetence and malice. ALL of the staff of the DVLA must be forced to attend two week courses at their expense to learn that they are paid to serve the public, not the other way round.
Perhaps some of those affected should be invited and paid full expenses and fees from the pockets of those in the DVLA to explain what their incompetence has done to them.
My younger son works at a well-known high street store and had to ring in sick last Sunday and when he returned to work he was surprised to find out that he would be paid for the lost shift, as he has never been paid for sickness absences in the 15 years that he has worked there.
When he enquired why, he was told that it was a new company policy that workers would be paid for 1 (ONE) shift per year for sickness absence so he will not be paid for a absence through sickness again for another 12 months.
PS: His attendance record is excellent; obviously the same cannot be said of some DVLA employees; indeed among a hell of a lot of the WFH brigade.