Driving test wait time target will not be met until autumn next year

7 minutes ago

Katy Austin Transport correspondent

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The driving test backlog won't be reduced to the target of seven weeks until autumn next year, the Transport Secretary has said.

Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) figures show the average waiting time to book a test last month was nearly 22 weeks.

Last November, Heidi Alexander announced changes aimed at cutting long waits and preventing test slots getting booked up - including by bots - and resold at inflated prices.

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the wait time was about five weeks.

The DVSA initially had a target of reducing the average waiting time to seven weeks by the end of 2025.

Alexander pushed this back to summer 2026, but admitted last November even that would not be possible.

She told a Committee of MPs on Wednesday that she understood people's frustrations and insisted the government has done a lot to tackle the issue.

However she added that "demand is still very high" and acknowledged there was still a lot of work to do.

The BBC has repeatedly heard from learner drivers frustrated by the difficulty of booking tests when, and where, they need them.

Some have ended up buying slots from resellers who charge many times the official cost of taking a driving test.

In the past few months, a number of changes to the test booking system have been introduced as part of efforts to combat the problem.

At the end of March, a new rule was brought in that only two changes could be made to a booked slot, for example the date or test centre location.

From 9 June, if you want to move your test, you can only move it to the three test centres closest to where your test is booked.

This is meant to stop learners booking the soonest slot available, wherever it is, then swapping it to a location closer to home.

The Transport Secretary told MPs it was too early to draw conclusions, but that there was already evidence of less speculative booking since the latest changes were brought in. For example, she said the volume of test swaps had gone down by 70%.

"My aspiration is to get us back down to a point where when someone is booking a test, they're not having to wait months on end to get one, which is the situation for some people in some locations at the moment," she said.

One issues which has previously been highlighted is the issue of recruiting and retaining enough driving examiners.

Alexander said there had been a net increase in examiners of 147 in the 12 months to May.

She also said the figures on average wait times published so far "have not been particularly helpful" so there will be a change to routinely published statistics "broken down by driving test centre as well".