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Who are the DVLA?

The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) is a Government organisation responsible for the following in Great Britain:

• Registering all vehicles
• Issuing driving licences
• Keeping a database of all drivers and vehicles
• Ensuring vehicle keepers pay road tax or vehicle excise duty (VED)

The DVLA therefore holds a vast amount of driver and vehicle data. Total Car Check has access to vehicle data and records of vehicles’ registered keepers. A keeper is the person who is in possession of and drives the vehicle. They are the named person on the pink V5C registration certificate issued by the DVLA.

What’s included in a DVLA check?

Our free initial check includes information sourced from the DVLA about any vehicle registered in Great Britain. It also provides the date the last V5C registration certificate was issued by the DVLA. This usually signifies when there was a new keeper or owner of the vehicle.

Additionally, our Silver and Gold checks contain the keeper or owner history of a vehicle. This tells you the dates of when the current and previous keepers were registered against the vehicle and how long they were keepers for. We and the DVLA do not provide the personal details of keepers. But you can apply for this information if you have reasonable cause to.

What about newly registered vehicles?

If a vehicle has only just been registered, re-registered or undergone a plate change it can take a few weeks before we are able to provide a report for the vehicle. This is because the DVLA supplies these records only once a month.