Of the 1.4 million citizens qualifying for exemption from vehicle tax, those born in a certain month of the year were unable to process their application following an upgrade error

After an “error” caused by an upgrade process resulted in six weeks of disruption for some users, the Department for Work and Pensions has restored full service to an online tool for disabled drivers.

The department operates a digital service for qualifying drivers to establish their exemption for vehicle tax – a dispensation which is available to more than one million recipients of a range of disability-related benefits.

Following an update to the online exemption tool made on 12 March, an issue caused by problems with the formatting of dates meant that the service was unable to accept applications from users born during the month of September. In order to complete the exemption process, these users were required to undertake an alternative procedure managed by the Post Office, rather than by the DWP.

This issue persisted for one day short of six weeks while the department’s digital experts worked on a fix. The full service was eventually restored last week, according to social security and disability minister Sir Stephen Timms.

Related content

• DWP ‘considering all modernisation options’ for Tell Us Once death-notification service
• EXCL: DWP to build ‘transformational in-house digital service’ to replace national Find a Job online tool
• EXCL: DWP to ‘reuse UC digital service’ code in £13.5m deal to support delivery of New Stye benefits

The minister – who was answering a written parliamentary question about the service disruption from Conservative MP Sir Desmond Swayne – added that the DWP’s tech function is striving to make sure that similar problems do not reoccur in future.

“A DWP service which enables disabled drivers to confirm their vehicle excise duty exemption when renewing their vehicle licence was upgraded on 12 March,” Timms said. “An error with date formats affected disabled drivers with a September date of birth. They had to follow an alternative process to apply for exemption through the Post Office. As soon as the problem was identified, DWP Digital took steps to resolve it. The service was restored on Tuesday 22 April at 11:09am. All disabled drivers, including those with a September date of birth, can now complete the check for duty exemption online. DWP Digital is taking steps to ensure this does not happen again with future service updates.”

The vehicle tax exemption is available to all claimants of benefits including: the higher rate mobility components of Disability Living Allowance and Child Disability Payment; the enhanced rate mobility components of Personal Independence Payment and Adult Disability Payment; Scottish Adult Disability Living Allowance; War Pensioners’ Mobility Supplement; and Armed Forces Independence Payment.

The latest set of government annual statistics indicated that, as of April of last year, “1.36 million vehicles were in the disabled tax class in the UK”.