Widow declared dead by DVLA in 'rare error'

A widow who was mistakenly registered as dead by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) has said it felt "awful" to realise she had spent months driving around without a valid licence.

The mistake occurred when Marbelia Davison, from Great Bookham in Surrey, took over ownership of her husband's car following his death in March last year.

Davison, 76, said she only learned of the error in October after she did not get a notification from the DVLA to renew her licence.

The DVLA has apologised to Davison and said "errors like this are rare".

On the moment the error came to light, Davison said: "They told me, 'you are registered as dead'... and I said, 'well, I'm here, I'm alive'."

Her son, Dan Davison, said the whole experience has been "exasperating".

"There's already a lot of admin you have to deal with when someone passes away," he added.

A compounding issue was that, until recently, Davison's application for a full licence which was made in October, still had not been processed.

Receiving a provisional licence in error also contributed to these delays.

"They [the DVLA] phoned me and said, 'my full driving licence is on the way within three to five days'," she said.

Davison's MP, Chris Coghlan, who represents Dorking and Horley, said his office had encountered "numerous issues" with people struggling to get a licence and getting the wrong licence.

While pleased about a positive resolution for his constituent, he said other people were "being left out on a limb".

Meanwhile, Davison said she had been offered £500 in compensation.

A spokesperson for the DVLA said: "We're sorry for the mistakes that were made in Mrs Davison's case.

"Errors like this are rare, but we know that's no comfort to those affected.

"We've reached out to Mrs Davison to apologise directly, and we're looking carefully at what went wrong so we can learn from it and prevent it happening again."

They added that the DVLA was currently dealing with an "exceptionally high number" of medical applications, leading to delays for some customers.

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