Many thanks everybody, some very useful thoughts and information here. I think the reality is that I have no option but to renew automatically and then reapply for D1. I simply cannot afford to miss the French trip. If that means the other drives in the team have to do my turn for a while so be it. I think a pint or two would smooth things out.

Good luck with that. My mum's passport has run out and because of all the similar problems at their dept, she's been forced to visit the regional office in person next week to start the ball rolling on a fast track to getting it renewed.

She'll still have to rely on their admin people and the (apparently not-so-good) specific courier they use for actually processing, making and sending the new one to her home by August. And paying a significant premium for the 'priviledge'.

Not sure if the DVLA has any way of speeding things up at present, and I've read many horror stories in the papers recently about waiting times on all these sorts of things.

I also just looked up some requirements on the .gov website and you would need a current valid passport if you want to renew your driver's licence and need to change the licence photo. Hopefully yours is OK (validity) as that could put the kybosh on the whole thing under the current circumstances.

dvladigital.blog.gov.uk/2022/01/14/how-to-renew-yo.../

During the pandemic, I had to phone DVLA medical and rang at 7.59 and 55 seconds in the morning. managed to get straight through to someone who put me through, and 2 minutes later all sorted.

Ring EARLY.. as above.

Maybe you got through to the one person who was actually working in their office rather than at home! :-)

Lots of these services appear to be a complete lottery as to the level of service at the moment, possibly where location (and thus likely the management thereof) of the office making a reasonable difference to the outcome.

I would imagine that with the data access, the complex systems and the despatch arrangements-this would be a seriously difficult job to complete AT HOME. I blame management for allowing it to fester and also the workers for not having the guts to help their seniors come up with sensible ways of getting round the problem.

I think I wrote in another post about Dr youngrovergirl.. HAD to go into work, even for telephone conversations as NHS could not provide a secure encrypted laptop to access patient details from home.

So normal clinics seeing patients and telephone consultations too, but all at the hospital. No Choice.