Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency
Freedom of Information – D16
DVLA
Longview Road
Swansea
SA6 7JL
Telephone
Fax
Miss E Smith
Textphone
[email address]
Email
Website
www.direct.gov.uk/motoring
Your Ref
Our Ref
FOIR1683
Date:
12 October 2009
Dear Miss Smith
We are writing in response to your request made under the Freedom of Information Act 2000
(FOIA) which was made on 24 September 2009.
You asked:
1. I would like to know how many people in the UK have been issued with a driving
licence with matching:
First name middle name surname sex date of birth
This information is held however, with almost 44 million licence holders, a scan of the
database would be necessary to provide the matches you have requested.
Section 12 of the FOI Act exempts the DVLA from complying with a request where the cost
in determining whether we hold the information, and locating, retrieving and extracting the
information exceeds £600. DVLA estimates that to collate these figures would exceed that to
extract and collate these figures would exceed that limit.
This represents the estimated cost of one person spending 3.5 days (or 24 hours) costs at
£25.00 per hour. This costing is set out in the Freedom of Information and Data Protection
(Appropriate Limit and Fees) Regulations 2004.
2. I would also like to know how this would be reflected on their respective driving
licences as I assume they would not be issued with an identical number?
Please see answer to question 3 for a full explanation of how the driver number is made up –
including what happens when more than one person shares the same surname, gender initials
and date of birth.
Page 1 of 3
3. Please also provide a detailed explanation as to how the 16 digit driving licence
number is generated, including the two digits after the space?
This information is held. There are no spaces in a driver number so I assume here you are
referring to the last two letters. A driver number is made up of the first five letters of the
individual’s surname, unless that surname has less than 5 letters, when the missing letters are
replaced with 9’s. So, for example, the surname FOX would read as FOX99. The following 6
digits are the individual’s date of birth in scrambled form. For a male born on 10 July 1959
this would read as – 507109 (ymmddy)
To differentiate female drivers from male drivers,
50 is added to the month of birth, so for a
female born on 10 July 1959 the digits would read as – 5
57109 (ymmddy)
The next two characters are the individual’s first two initials. Where the individual only has
one forename then the first initial is followed by 9.
The next character is always a 9 unless there is already a driver with the same surname,
gender, initials and date of birth. If this is the case then the character becomes 8. If there is a
third driver with the same name and date of birth then the character will be 7 then 6 and so
on.
However, it is the last two letters, which are allocated by the computer, that make every
driver number unique.
4. I would also like to know how many driving licences exist for all classifications,
preferably in electronic format.
This information is held. Please see the attached spreadsheet detailing ordinary driving
licence entitlement (ODL – car/motorcycle etc) as well as vocational driving licence
entitlement (VOC – bus and lorry). You will note that the figures are also separated into male
and female and broken down by age. Please be aware that a person may have one or several
of these categories on their driving licence at once. For example, car, motorcycle and lorry
entitlement. A separate spreadsheet shows provisional licence holders.
The information supplied to you continues to be protected by the Copyright, Designs and
Patents Act 1988. You are free to use it for your own purposes, including any non-
commercial research you are doing and for the purposes of news reporting. Any other re-use,
for example commercial publication, would require the permission of the copyright holder.
Most documents supplied by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency will have been
produced by Government officials and will be Crown Copyright. You can find details on the
arrangements for re-using Crown Copyright on the Office of Public Sector Information
website at:
http://www.opsi.gov.uk/click/use/index.htm.
If you are unhappy with the decisions made by this Agency in relation to your request, you
may ask for an internal review. If you wish to complain, you should write to this email
address.
Page 2 of 3
If you are not content with the outcome of the internal review, you have the right to apply
directly to the Information Commissioner for a decision. Please see attached details of the
complaints procedure and your right to complain to the Information Commissioner.
If you have any queries about this letter, please contact this email address using the details
above. Please remember to quote the reference above in any future communications.
Yours sincerely,
Freedom of Information
DVLA
Page 3 of 3
