Online Car Tax Renewal Breaks As New Rules Begin
Thousands found themselves unable to renew their car tax on Wednesday as the new system where paper tax discs are no longer required came into operation.
According to reports in the UK press, many motorists spent up to 13 hours online yesterday attempting to renew their tax unsuccessfully.
The DVLA claims that it had received an “unprecedented” amount of traffic – 30,000 more people than the same time last year are said to have visited the website.
Although 250,000 people were successfully processed yesterday, the organisation admits it has seen an increase in interest of its online services since it was announced the tax disc was to be abolished.
The DVLA insists the system was built to scale, it says the 6000 requests a minute it was receiving yesterday were slowing the system down.
The Department is now launching a full investigation into why the disruptions occurred.
The New Tax System
Under the new system, an electronic vehicle register will be used when trying to determine whether a car on the road is correctly taxed or not.
Those who are incorrectly taxed or not taxed at all will then be sent an automatic reminder or late licensing penalty for failing to keep up to date with their payments.
The DVLA believes it can save £10m a year by not having to print and distribute paper tax discs.
“Exemplar” Services
The DVLA is an executive agency of the Department for Transport (DfT) which is currently developing three exemplar services as part of the government’s plan to develop “digital by default” online services that are so good people prefer to use them.
The three services, view driving licence, personalised registrations, and vehicle management, are all in the beta phase of testing.
View driving licence is in public beta, meaning it is being tested by a limited number of citizens before it can be classified as live.
However, this service was originally intended to go live between July and September 2014, suggesting there are still some issues to be ironed out.
© 24N.biz
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