During the COVID-19 pandemic, the DVLA prioritised those services with the highest volumes of applications or where it believed processing delays would cause greater problems. The DVLA told us that in 2020, it prioritised reducing the backlog in paper applications for vehicle-related transactions, because at the time, these backlogs were a bigger problem than the backlog in paper-based driving licence applications. The DVLA prioritised vehicle services because of the higher volume of vehicle-related work, in the knowledge that it would have a knock-on effect on driving licence services. The DVLA told us that to address backlogs in driving licence applications, its approach was to arrange a change to the law that meant no customers needed to renew licences that expired in the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic.33