Thread by @thetimes

🔎 Hundreds of civil servants at the DVLA have done no work on full pay for significant periods of the pandemic as managers boast of watching Netflix at the public’s expense, a Times investigation can reveal thetimes.co.uk/article/dvla-s…

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

.@thetimes began an investigation into the DVLA because of repeated complaints from drivers about having to wait months, or in some cases more than a year, for their cases to be processed

An undercover reporter was hired as a DVLA call handler in January and worked at its offices last month

Managers told of spending working days watching TV series in bed

A training manager joked about avoiding work while at home, saying: “My manager would be messaging me, can you do this? and I’d be like, you’re interrupting my series on Netflix”

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”

Last night, the transport secretary @grantshapps ordered a “thorough investigation” into @thetimes findings, saying he was “deeply concerned” and “expects quick answers” from DVLA bosses

.@pmorganbentley reports 👇

🗣️“My training at the DVLA was taken by three managers. They explained how during the pandemic the agency had built up an enormous backlog of cases”
thetimes.co.uk/article/inside…

🗣️“During training recruits were repeatedly told to tell drivers that they should expect to wait between six and ten weeks for applications to be processed during the pandemic, even though hundreds of thousands of people are waiting longer than this”
thetimes.co.uk/article/inside…

A DVLA spokesman said: “We take the allegations extremely seriously and are urgently investigating. These claims are not representative of the hardworking culture in DVLA”

Read the full investigation 👇
thetimes.co.uk/article/dvla-s…