Well, unless you've had your head in the sand, you'll presumably have heard all the long term complaints from pilots about the delays in issuing their licences (not to mention a few strange, arbritrary, and inconsistent licence issue decisions).
About 3 years ago, CAA decided in the name of efficiency to merge the "pilots licensing" and the "engineer licensing" departments making them "personnel licensing". Further, they took the man who had so efficiently been running pilot licensing (and has to my mind even less of a clue about engineering than he has about flying) and put him in charge of the whole lot.
If this wasn't bad enough, they run things that the people processing the licences are also the same people who have to answer the phone calls complaining about delays. So, not only does this reduce their efficiency hugely, but many of the more capable people got so fed up with the verbal abuse they were getting from upset pilots and engineers who couldn't work without their licences, that they've left.
Incidentally, the character who has in charge of all of this, and clearly failed to sort out any of the problems, is no longer in PLD - they promoted him!
Or so I've heard
G