The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (the DVLA) is an agency of the Department for Transport in the United Kingdom. It is responsible for maintaining a database of British drivers and vehicles. The agency adminsters driving tests, grants driving licences and organises collection of Vehicle Excise Duty (also known as road tax). In the United Kingdom, the Department for Transport is the government department responsible for the transport network. ... Driving licences within the European Union are subdivided in different categories. ...

The DVLA is based at the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Centre (DVLC) in Swansea, Wales. Swansea (Welsh: Abertawe - aber river-mouth + river Tawe) is a city and county in South Wales, situated on the coast, immediately to the east of the Gower peninsula in the traditional county of Glamorgan. ... National motto: Cymru am byth (Welsh: Wales for ever) Waless location within the UK Official languages English and Welsh Capital Cardiff Largest city Cardiff First Minister Rhodri Morgan Area  - Total Ranked 3rd UK 20,779 km² Population  - Total (2001)  - Density Ranked 3rd UK 2,903,085 140/km² NUTS...

Data held by DVLA is used in many ways. For example, cars caught entering Central London without paying the congestion charge or driving too fast on a road with speed cameras are matched to their owners using the DVLA database. Greater London and the Regions of England. ... The white on red C marks all entrances to the Congestion Charge zone. ... A red-light camera in use in Beaverton, Oregon A road-rule enforcement camera is a system including a camera and a vehicle-monitoring device used to detect and identify vehicles disobeying a road rule or road rules. ...

DVLA database

The current DVLA database was built by EDS under a 5 million pound contract signed in 1996, with a planned implementation date on October 1998, though actual implementation was delayed by a year. It uses a client-server architecture and uses the vehicle identification number, rather than the registration plate, as the primary key to track vehicles, overcomming eliminating the possibility of having multiple registrations for a single vehicle, a scam known as ghosting. However the accuracy of the data held remains a continuing problem. The pound sterling, which strictly speaking refers to basic currency unit of sterling, now the pound, can generally refer to the currency of the United Kingdom (UK). ... 1996 is a leap year starting on Monday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year for the Eradication of Poverty. ... 1998 is a common year starting on Thursday of the Gregorian calendar, and was designated the International Year of the Ocean. ... Client/Server is a network application architecture which separates the client (usually the graphical user interface) from the server. ... Vehicle identification numbers (VINs) are used to uniquely identify motor vehicles. ... A license plate, licence plate, number plate or registration plate (often referred to simply as a plate, or colloquially tag) is a small metal or plastic plate attached to a motor vehicle for official identification purposes. ... In telecommunication, multipath is the propagation phenomenon that results in radio signals reaching the receiving antenna by two or more paths. ...

A further system, the Drivers Database, developed in conjunction with the Police Information Technology Organisation and delivered in March 2002, enables the police to verify drivers' licences via the Police National Computer, and holds details of around 20 million photocard driving licences. This is an implementation of an automatic number plate recognition system. 2002 is a common year starting on Tuesday of the Gregorian calendar. ... The Police National Computer (PNC) is a computer system used by police forces in the UK. Created in 1974 and now consisting of several databases accessible 24 hours a day, it is run by the Police Information Technology Organisation (PITO). ... The system must be able to deal with different styles of licence plates Automatic number plate recognition (ANPR) is a mass surveillance method that uses optical character recognition on images to read the licence plates on vehicles. ...

See also

• UK topics

Shortcut: UK topics This is a list of topics related to the United Kingdom. ...

External links

• http://www.dvla.gov.uk
• IT outsourcing is no licence to save money (http://www.computerweekly.com/Article105635.htm)
• DVLA runs into IT trouble (http://www.itweek.co.uk/news/1120339)
• Database to nail rogue drivers (http://www.kablenet.com/kd.nsf/Frontpage/701862EA33AF534280256B89005B8858?OpenDocument)