Every vehicle licensing transaction in Great Britain is recorded and stored by the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA). This provides an immensely rich source of data on vehicle stock. Vehicle stock data have many uses and form the background for numerous studies and projects. The data come form an administrative source and are therefore not collected and held with statistical analyses in mind. Problems such as non-comparability as a result of administrative changes do occur but tend to be minor in comparison to the benefits of having a complete record of vehicles. It is, however, important to bear in mind the peculiarities of the data, especially since there are often many different ways of answering the same question (for example 'How many cars are there in Great Britain?'). Some people will be interested in tax classes, others in body type and others in those vehicles that are not licensed but should be. There is scope for making more use of the data, especially once customers understand what is available and there is every reason to expect vehicle stock data to become more important when it can be linked to other sources of vehicle data. (A) For the covering abstract see ITRD E108997.
Abstract