Hundreds of thousands of learner drivers across the UK are still waiting to book their driving tests – and chances are, they’ll now be waiting even longer.
The public spending watchdog has said that the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) will not be able to honour its commitment to reduce waiting times to seven weeks by the end of this year.
Plans to improve efficiency, including by introducing a new booking system before 2030, are “unlikely to contribute to any significant reduction in waiting times in the next 12 months”, said the National Audit Office. Its report highlights the DVSA’s failure to address central problems, including a flagging workforce and “abuse” of the online test booking system by bots, said the Financial Times.
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How big is the backlog?
Waiting times for driving tests were “significantly worsened by Covid restrictions”, with 1.1 million tests missed in the 2020/21 financial year, said The Independent. Though some progress has been made since, “an estimated 360,000 of these tests remain unbooked”.
In September, the average waiting time for a driving test stood at 22 weeks. The DVSA pledged to cut it to seven weeks by the end of this year, but the NAO has said that target is not likely to be reached before November 2027.
The DVSA attributed the long waiting times to “increased demand and people booking tests much earlier than before”, said the BBC.
How did it get so bad?
The “huge waiting times” for tests took shape during the pandemic, “when test centres were shuttered and driving instructors were unable to work” and the number of drivers waiting “quadrupled”, said This is Money. Since then, the only “significant dip” in demand was between October 2023 and March 2024, when the DVSA “temporarily deployed all eligible staff from other roles to act as examiners” in an effort to address the backlog.
The DVSA’s online test booking service has also been inundated with bots. They quickly book up tests on behalf of third parties, who then inflate prices before reselling the slots to learners. While a typical driving test costs learners £62 on weekdays and £75 at the weekend or during evenings, some of these third parties charge up to £500 for a pre-booked slot, according to letter from a group of MPs to the government.
And, though it has conducted nearly 20 recruitment campaigns since February 2021, the DVSA has only been able to recruit 83 examiners – far short of its goal of 400. The NAO has said uncompetitive pay and personal safety concerns, with hundreds of assaults on examiners reported over the last year, have only added to the delays.
What is being done about it?
To address workforce concerns, “driving examiners will be offered a ‘retention payment’ of £5,000 from next year to try and keep them in the role”, said the BBC.
Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has also announced that only learners – not their instructors or other third parties – will be able to book tests on the DVSA platform. Learners will be limited in the amount of times they can move or change their test, and will also be limited in distance – they won’t be able to alter a booked test’s location to a different town or city, for example, a practice associated with reselling. Alexander has said these measures will help ensure learner drivers aren’t “exploited” by bots.
