Plate Buyers Paid DVLA £163 Million as 1.39 Million Calls Were Abandoned

• DVLA’s annual report and accounts for the 2025 to 2026 financial year record 1,387,706 abandoned calls, an abandonment rate of 16.5 percent.
• Sales of personalised number plates raised £163.2 million, up £8.0 million on the year before, and moving existing plates between cars added about £127 million of net income.
• Car tax collection reached a record £9.03 billion, at a cost of just over 1p for every £1 collected.

One in Six Calls to the DVLA Was Abandoned While the Plate Money Kept Growing

DVLA recorded 1,387,706 abandoned calls in the financial year to March 2026, an abandonment rate of 16.5 percent. In the same twelve months, plate buyers paid it £163.2 million for personalised registrations, £8.0 million more than the £155.1 million of 2024 to 2025.

That is roughly one call in six. If the rate is measured against every call DVLA received, its phone lines were offered about 8.4 million calls in the year (1,387,706 divided by 0.165 gives 8,410,339), and about 7.0 million of them were not abandoned. DVLA does not publish the offered total, so the 8.4 million is a calculation, not a reported figure. Spread across all 365 days, abandoned calls averaged about 3,800 a day.

Plate sales made up only part of the money. Transfers of existing plates from one vehicle to another brought in £138.3 million, taking the two plate streams to £301.4 million between them. Car tax adds a third figure to the pile: £9.03 billion collected, with DVLA’s own estimate of what slipped through.

The Calls: 1,387,706 Abandoned and a Medical Backlog Behind Them

DVLA blames its medical casework. Delays in processing applications from drivers with medical conditions raised the number of people getting in touch, and callers faced stretches of waiting that DVLA admits were worse than its own service standard. Overall telephone contact still fell on the year before, which DVLA links to more people using online and automated services.

The accounts publish no abandonment rate for 2024 to 2025, so the direction of travel is unknown. What they do give is the medical queue behind the calls. Drivers Medical decisions took an average of 56.6 days against a target of 50 days, a miss of 6.6 days. DVLA made 751,058 medical licensing decisions in the year, 9.7 percent fewer than the year before. It links the fall to the move onto a new casework system, which ran alongside the old one for a period while staff were trained. A push to clear older and more complex cases before the migration pushed the average decision time up in the short term. Cases needing further medical investigation took longer, and DVLA says that fed more contact, longer waits, more unanswered calls and slower handling of complaints.

Satisfaction slipped. Across the four main services DVLA surveys (taxing a vehicle, amending registration details, renewing a driving licence and telling DVLA about a medical condition), satisfaction was 91.8 percent against 92.2 percent the year before, a fall of 0.4 of a percentage point. On the UK Customer Satisfaction Index, DVLA placed ninth among national public services in January 2026, after sixth in July 2025.

The phone is one door among several. Across every channel, DVLA’s contact centre handled just over 13.4 million queries, which works out at 1.2 customers every second of opening hours. The agency processed more than 100 million customer transactions in the year, with over 85 percent done online. Tim Moss, DVLA’s Chief Executive, says a new digital portal delivered at the end of the year can deal with more than 1,000 medical conditions for the first time, and that the portal and extra recruitment will improve the service in the coming year. A WhatsApp channel ran as a limited pilot for selected customers, and DVLA planned a full rollout for August 2026.

The Plate Money: £163.2 Million Raised for £5.8 Million Spent

Personalised registrations are the most profitable line in DVLA’s accounts. Revenue from selling them was £163,163,000, up from £155,129,000 in 2024 to 2025: an extra £8.03 million, a rise of 5.2 percent. DVLA credits higher volumes across web and auction sales, helped by the availability of high value registrations. After £5.76 million of costs, up from £4.59 million, the net income was £157.4 million against £150.5 million, a gain of £6.87 million or 4.6 percent. Selling plates cost DVLA about 3.5p for every £1 it took.

Only three years in the scheme’s history have brought in more, and sales have now generated £3 billion in net income in total, counting from the launch in 1989. The cheapest plates cost £250, a price that includes VAT and the assignment fee. At the top end a single registration can sell for far more, as with a plate that sold for £17,644. DVLA also moved its auctions to a new supplier on 1 October 2025, with what it describes as lower additional fees for buyers.

Cherished transfers, the fee for moving a number you already own onto another vehicle, are a second stream. They brought in £138.3 million against £133.6 million the year before, up £4.6 million, which DVLA attributes to higher fees from customers transferring plates between vehicles. After £11.3 million of costs, transfers left £126.9 million, compared with £123.9 million in 2024 to 2025, a rise of £3.0 million or 2.4 percent. DVLA’s own headline for the stream is about £127 million.

Put the two together and plate sales and transfers produced £301.4 million of revenue, up £12.7 million or 4.4 percent from £288.8 million. After costs they left £284.3 million, up £9.9 million or 3.6 percent from £274.5 million.

Where the Surplus Goes: The Other Fees Ran at a £23.4 Million Loss

The money from plates does not stay at DVLA. The accounts record the £157.4 million from plate sales and the £126.9 million from transfers as Consolidated Fund Extra Receipts payable, £284.3 million in all. Of that total, £150 million goes to the Consolidated Fund and £134.3 million to the Department for Transport under an agreement with HM Treasury.

The other fees DVLA charges for keeping the driver and vehicle registers ran at a deficit. Fees and charges brought in £350.5 million and cost £373.9 million to run, a shortfall of £23.4 million against £9.3 million the year before. That is an increase of £14.1 million, about two and a half times the previous gap. DVLA’s financial aim is to recover the full cost of the registers over the medium term, and the cost recovery rule applies to every stream except plates and transfers. Driver fee income fell by £6.1 million as fewer people applied for a first licence or a duplicate, while postage and printing costs rose by £8.0 million.

Set side by side, the year produced £284.3 million of net plate and transfer income for the Consolidated Fund and 1,387,706 abandoned calls at the same agency.

Car Tax: £9.03 Billion Collected and an Estimate of What Slips Through

Vehicle excise duty, the tax drivers pay to license a car, brought in £9.03 billion after refunds, against £8.36 billion in 2024 to 2025. That is £0.67 billion more, a rise of 8.0 percent and the highest DVLA has collected. Collecting it cost a net £102 million, up from £98 million, which works out as just over 1p for every £1 of gross duty. Selling plates costs about 3.5p for every £1 taken, against just over 1p for every £1 of car tax. Rates differ by car: a petrol or diesel car with a list price above £40,000 carries an extra £440 a year for five years, set out in DVLA’s luxury car tax.

DVLA puts compliance at about 98.8 percent of vehicles for the year, in line with the 98.6 to 98.9 percent it gets from number plate camera data and the 98.7 percent in the Department for Transport’s 2023 evasion statistics. That leaves a gap, and DVLA has priced it. Its low estimate of revenue forgone is £52.5 million. The high estimate is £133.3 million, which assumes every non compliant vehicle stays unlicensed for a full year at an average rate of £230.99, the equivalent of roughly 577,000 vehicles (£133.3 million divided by £230.99). The high estimate sits below the £190 million materiality threshold, and non compliance would need to rise to about 1.7 to 4.4 percent to pass it.

The Department for Transport’s 2023 survey of vehicles on the road found 1.3 percent of vehicles on the road unlicensed, and an estimated 498,000 unlicensed vehicles in the active stock, 1.2 percent of all vehicles. Many of those are brief lapses: 54 percent of the unlicensed vehicles observed in that survey had been unlicensed for under two months, which is why DVLA calls its estimates the theoretical maximum revenue that could be due and expects the actual loss to be lower. DVLA’s review of its 2024 to 2025 enforcement found a return of at least 2.1 to 1 on direct costs and direct income, with money collected after prosecution still to be analysed.

The National Audit Office pushed DVLA to publish the estimate. In an appendix to the accounts, Gareth Davies, the Comptroller and Auditor General, lists what he asked for in his report on the 2024 to 2025 accounts. One recommendation was: “I recommend that DVLA and DfT develop a long-term approach for estimating reliably the cost of VED non-compliance to help DVLA target and deliver enforcement and compliance activity more cost-effectively and to enhance Parliamentary visibility of revenue lost to the taxpayer. This should include considering a range of options as to how they might achieve this.” The accounts mark it in progress, with DVLA and the Department for Transport working an improved approach into a roadside survey planned for 2027.

The second was: “I recommend that, until a long-term solution is put into place, DVLA use the data it holds to produce the best estimate it can of the cost of VED non-compliance for reporting next year and include any limitations of its estimate in its reporting.” The accounts mark it closed: DVLA built an estimate for 2025 to 2026 from internal data and reported it.

How to Stay Off the Phone and Out of the Reminder Chain

Most DVLA tasks do not need a call. Taxing a vehicle and making a SORN, the Statutory Off Road Notification that declares a car is not on the road, can both be done online at any hour, on any day. Anyone who struggles with a lump sum can pay by Direct Debit and spread the tax monthly over 6 or 12 months. The practical guide to dealing with the DVLA covers registration, V5C, road tax, licences and number plates in one place.

A lapse sets off a fixed sequence. DVLA sends a reminder letter. If a scan of the vehicle record 14 to 15 days after the date of liability shows the car still unlicensed and not declared SORN, a Last Chance Reminder follows. A keeper who then neither relicenses nor declares SORN gets a Late Licensing Penalty letter that sets out the legal basis for payment. Where an untaxed vehicle is found used or kept on a public road, an out of court settlement letter arrives, and an unpaid settlement can go to the magistrates’ court as a criminal prosecution. A vehicle that attracts a zero rate of duty still has to be licensed or declared SORN, so a car with nothing to pay still needs the step.

Drivers with a medical condition should use the online route first, as the new portal deals with more than 1,000 conditions, and plan for a decision time that averaged 56.6 days last year. For anything that needs a person, the Contact DVLA service on GOV.UK points you to the correct phone number, email or postal address for vehicle tax and SORN, driving licences, number plates, V5C documents and health conditions.

Plate buyers have their own checks. To move a number between vehicles, the owner takes it off the first vehicle and assigns it to the second, either online or by post with form V317, and a plate must be made by a registered supplier. A number kept on retention is proved by a V778 document, and the right to use it has to be renewed every 10 years. Anyone selling a number online should keep images of the V750 or V778 private, so nobody else can try to assign the number to a different vehicle.

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Sources

• DVLA: Annual Report and Accounts 2025-26
• Department for Transport: Vehicle excise duty evasion statistics 2023
• GOV.UK: Private (personalised) number plates
• GOV.UK: Contact DVLA

Reviewed by Preetam Gadekar