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Last updated: 27 March 2009
The Department for Transport’s (DfT) aim is for a transport system that works for everyone – balancing the needs of the economy, the environment and society.
With millions of transport journeys made every day, 42 million drivers, and 161 million motoring transactions taking place each year, the department plays a vital part in the nation’s economic prosperity and impacts on virtually every citizen and business in the country.
The Department for Transport has been engaging with citizens and businesses to ensure that the services it provides meet their needs, enabling its staff to deliver better services and ensure value for money for the taxpayer.
24–hour online services for customers
Over the past few years the department has made a range of innovative self–service facilities available so that customers can now go online to apply for a provisional driving licence, update or replace their full driving licence, book provisional or practical driving tests, renew car tax or declare their vehicle off the road, and amend their commercial vehicle records. Customers can also track the progress of their driving licence transactions and view their driver record securely.
In 2006/07, 54% of all practical driving tests and 63% of theory tests were booked online, while speech recognition services answered 648,000 calls from people seeking earlier test dates. In 2007/08 this figure has risen sharply to 68% of practical tests and 81% of theory tests.
Increase in online services
On 7 June 2007 a further four online services for motorists were added to the Directgov website [External website]. These allow customers to:
The motoring section is already the most popular part of the Directgov website with over 500,000 visits a week, almost a third of the total.
Commercial vehicle operators are also able to amend their operator details and pay fees electronically. Around 59% of all Operator Licence transactions, some 180,000 transactions a year, are now carried out online, reducing the burden on businesses.
The UK Ship Register [External website] has brought together all parts of the ship registration process online; over the coming year a Single Vessel Database (SVD) will deliver a range of benefits to customers, including enabling shipping companies to review their fleet details and amend application details for UK registrations online.
Work to reduce the number of DfT lead websites and move the content to the Government’s Directgov and Business Link sites is also moving ahead. By 31 December 2007, 101 websites have been identified across the DfT family. Eighteen of these have already closed and the majority of the rest are due to close by March of 2011.
Informed travellers
The Highways Agency continues to improve the ways customers can plan their journeys and find out about delays and problems on the network. Services include advance warning of delays and average journey times on roadside variable message signs, and the Traffic England service offering travel information through DirectGov, the Agency website and a 24–hour automated telephone service.
Following a trial in 2006, interactive information points, using touch screens, were installed at 24 motorway services and in July 2007 the Highways Agency launched a new digital ‘Traffic Radio’, updated every 10 minutes at busy times, to help road users to plan their journeys better.
Transport Direct
The Department of Transport’s online journey planning service, Transport Direct [External website], is helping people to plan door–todoor journeys across the whole of Great Britain by any mode of transport. Since its launch in late 2004, the site has been accessed 30 million times with a current annual usage of 18 million user sessions. It shares journey information with businesses, local government and other parts of Central Government to help them with planning thier services.
In 2007 new features were added to the Transport Direct site to help customers assess the carbon footprint of their selected journey and compare this with emissions for other modes of transport. A number of shared websites have also been developed with National Rail, the National Trust, Google and the Department of Work and Pensions.