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Civil service insanity - you couldn't write it!!
Paul AS - 25/4/13 at 06:18 PM

Firstly let me apologise to all sensible non-jobsworth civil servants for the subject title, but get a load of this.

Monday morning - IVA pass Chadderton, Manchester, and IAC certificate.

Monday afternoon - DVLA Leeds - submit registration application and pay registration fee. I'm told that there used to be 3 inspectors, now there's 1, and he's run off his feet. He may want to inspect, he may not.

Thursday morning, receive DVLA Leeds letter asking to inspect the car, or to be more precise, the chassis number. I could have sworn that a VOSA civil servant already did that and wrote it on a legal document when they issued the IAC certifiacate?

Thursday afternoon, ring DVLA phone number on letter, Swansea!!

Swansea take all the details and then tell me that they don't book the appointment - Leeds do!

Leeds will ring me (hopefully) on Friday morning between 9 and 11 to book the inspection appointment, on the phone number I gave them on Monday, which is at a different office to the DVLA office, on the 3rd floor of an office building!!

There may not be any parking. I will need to ring the second office to find out but there is no way of contacting them. I may be required to take the car off the trailer at the place I may not be able to park and not be able to contact.

Then to rub salt into the wound I read from another J15 builder that they will be issued with a reg no. and log book from the Nottingham office in 48 hrs without inspection.

And they wonder why the government wants to close inefficient local DVLA offices - insane!!


monkeyarms - 25/4/13 at 07:17 PM

Ouch, thats what i was worried about happening to me at DVLA. I know I have been really lucky so far, but I wont be 100% happy untill I have my tax disc and a reg number to make a plate up!

Is there no way to appeal, or could you go back into the DVLA office with nice photos of the chassis numbers ect?
Anyone know if thats possible?


plantman - 25/4/13 at 07:58 PM

haha that sound a bit like mine reg experience

asked in the dvla do you want to inspect the car for a vehicle identity number on no we don't need to do that.......

even after i said i thought you do on no we don't i must have said this 6 or 7 times after i said look i am certain you have to inspect the car she got really stroppy and said NO we don't

2 days later i had aletter asking go on guess please could you bring your vehicle for a vehicle identity check


ARRAGHHH


motorcycle_mayhem - 25/4/13 at 08:13 PM

The Idiocracy IS the Public Sector, it consumes all (and £20 billion a month or so on top of that), produces very little.


theprisioner - 25/4/13 at 08:21 PM

You lot are filling me with confidence!!!!!!


Paul AS - 25/4/13 at 08:23 PM

It gets better! I'm teaching my son the drive. He says "can we go out tonight?" Of course - we'll go and find this DVLA office, so I know where I'm going.

Turns out that its not a DVLA office, it's a VOSA inspection centre, and the building next door houses a PSA?? office?

Its a custom built industrial site with more parking than you can shake a stick at!

Laugh - too bloody right I did!!


ReMan - 25/4/13 at 09:45 PM

Cox!


ashg - 25/4/13 at 10:03 PM

iva'd both cars drove them to dvla and registered them at maidstone without any problems


onenastyviper - 26/4/13 at 06:26 AM

quote:
Originally posted by motorcycle_mayhem
The Idiocracy IS the Public Sector, it consumes all (and £20 billion a month or so on top of that), produces very little.


Private sector isn't much greater - it just hides it better


Irony - 26/4/13 at 07:27 AM

quote:
Originally posted by onenastyviper
quote:
Originally posted by motorcycle_mayhem
The Idiocracy IS the Public Sector, it consumes all (and £20 billion a month or so on top of that), produces very little.


Private sector isn't much greater - it just hides it better


The Private Sector is MUCH better. If we do our jobs poorly in the private sector we lose them. In the Public Sector they don't. The level of customer service the OP is receiving is just plain diabolical. If that was a private business then another company down the road would be doing a better job and they would get the business.


daviep - 26/4/13 at 07:49 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Irony
The Private Sector is MUCH better. If we do our jobs poorly in the private sector we lose them. In the Public Sector they don't. The level of customer service the OP is receiving is just plain diabolical. If that was a private business then another company down the road would be doing a better job and they would get the business.


Not entirely sure why you think OP is recieving "diabolical" service?

He handed his documents in on Monday afternoon, Thursday he recieves a letter requesting he call to arrange an appointment, makes phone call and gives details on Thursday and is told the local DVLA centre will call him with an appointment time the next day.

Seems entirely reasonable to me, many countries in the world the process is literaly impossible and you cannot register a kitcar for use on the road.

Cheers
Davie


jps - 26/4/13 at 08:08 AM

quote:
Originally posted by Irony
The Private Sector is MUCH better. If we do our jobs poorly in the private sector we lose them.


Yeah - because blanket statements like that are always true.

Like all those people working in the finance sector who didn't exactly do a glowing job - but managed to hang onto their jobs and even their bonuses...

Private and public sector alike - plenty of organisations forget that the experience for the customer should be the most important thing. Toyota anyone?


snapper - 26/4/13 at 08:31 AM

If you privatise ALL public sector jobs and functions there is profit to be made directly from YOUR taxes or indirectly from price fixing
The power company's were all public sector once

That said these enormous sweeping statements mean nothing unless you get to very fine detail

Every country in the world has a public sector for a reason if you can postulate a different way of running a country I suggest you talk to the Cabinet Office and the Treasury

Back to DVLA local offices which will close by 2014/15 how would you like to be told your job is going but you have to stay and work on the systems that will replace you?

In my department all IT is going over to a new system, our IT staff have been told that half will loose there jobs soon the rest will not be redeployed or have access to other internal moves or redundancy payments until they have integrated our specialist systems into the new global system

You couldn't make it up

I've got to much invested in a pension as have many others to walk so we take the s41t from inside the system and from outside

You try it, you wouldn't last a week


Paul AS - 26/4/13 at 09:21 AM

Well, back to the original story!

I have very efficiently just had the phone call as promised, from a very helpful and informative gentleman called Luke Brown. I am booked in to see him and he is inspecting the car at 12 noon on Monday.

He says that the paperwork will be done on Monday afternoon or Tuesday morning at the latest and I should receive my tax disc etc by Wednesday.

As he seemed the helpful type I quizzed him as to why some cars were inspected and others weren't. He stated that all kits cars should be inspected by a DVLA officer in all cases. He completely agrees that the mechanism for arranging these inspections is mad but "that's just how it is".

In the case of the Nottingham office, as far as his is aware, 15 staff left in one hit for the Border Agency, and with the coming changes, have not been replaced.

The service I have had, and the people I have dealt with, have been fine all along the route, through IVA, DVLA and VOSA. The process however appears to have been designed by committee, with the appropriate result!


Dangle_kt - 26/4/13 at 09:53 AM

quote:
Originally posted by motorcycle_mayhem
The Idiocracy IS the Public Sector, it consumes all (and £20 billion a month or so on top of that), produces very little.


HAHA!

What a load of tosh.

DVLA can be poor - especially when it comes to the less common registration processes around kit cars, but no need to lump all public sector into the pot as a convenient political pop shot.

And no - I dont work for the public sector anymore, but there are plenty of hardworking people who do, and I see just as much waste and stupid decision making in the private sector.