An aspiring police officer desperate to pass her driving test so she could start work was forced to book a slot in Birmingham – 150 miles from her home – because of the huge wait for appointments. The average national wait time for a test hit 19 weeks – around four months – in September, according to official figures.
Learners were forced to compete with “bots” booking precious appointments so they could be sold on for profit, a Parliamentary debate heard on Wednesday, October 16. Bosses behind the booking system said they had been buying back examiners’ holiday to create more availability.
MPs told roads minister Lilian Greenwood that some of their constituents had travelled hundreds of miles to secure their licences, including between Reading and Cornwall, and Bracknell and Aberdeen. More than 500,000 tests are booked in the system at any one time, according to the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency.
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It changed its terms and conditions last year in a bid to block people from using bots to secure slots and sell them on a profit. Labour’s Kevin McKenna told MPs in Westminster Hall that he met a constituent whose daughter was “desperate” to become a police officer.
The MP for Sittingbourne and Sheppey in Kent said: “She can’t start a job because she needs to be able to drive for the job, she’ll be working in shifts, all she could find was a driving test months down the line in Birmingham, 150 miles away. She’s one of the luckier constituents in that she could actually find one.”
Mr McKenna, 50, also revealed he was yet to put on his L-plates. “After the election, it finally forced my hand to learn to drive,” he told the PA news agency after the debate. “And then I started looking and hitting this problem and hearing from constituents and really digging into it and it’s like, well, how do I even plan to learn to drive?
“It doesn’t stop me getting around, to be fair, I’m quite good cadging lifts and I’ve got my bike and I can get around but not in the way that I really want to. So it’s moved it on – ‘let’s make that a next year project rather than right now’. And this is the kind of impact it’s having on all sorts of people.”
(Image: Stuart Vance)
He said people working in construction and trade “need a van and a lot of these are self-employed and setting up their own businesses – it’s really hard to do that if as well as learning the trade, they’re struggling to actually get through that basic hurdle which is the ability to move around”.
Liberal Democrat transport spokesman Paul Kohler said he had heard about a newly-trained paramedic who faced a four-month wait to take the driving test required for an ambulance. Mr Kohler, the MP for Wimbledon, also described “a black market” which had emerged, “with individuals forced to compete with computer bots to book the precious few slots available when they come online”.
Peter Swallow, who secured the debate, said constituents from his Berkshire patch had travelled to Wales, “which involved a costly round trip and an overnight stay all just to get a test sorted in a reasonable timeframe”, the Isle of Wight and Aberdeen.
The Labour MP, who confessed to having failed his first test, said: “Honourable members will remember the great feeling of liberation of getting behind the wheel for their first time after passing their driving tests. It’s a rite of passage but instead of the moment of great excitement, it’s a source of punishing expense, confusion and misery.”
The DVSA has closed 705 business accounts and issued 766 suspensions since a January 2023 rule change, in a bid to stop bots and brokers from making a profit out of tests. Conservative shadow transport minister Greg Smith said the problem of bots “requires very firm action”. He added: “Post-pandemic, the Conservative government did take clear action.
“We opened up nearly ten per cent more driving tests every week than before the pandemic by the end of 2022 but despite the DVSA making a million extra tests available since the pandemic – a million extra tests – waiting times have remained stubbornly high.
“That’s partly because of a growing economy the new Government has inherited and the demand that has created for new tests.” Ms Greenwood said the DVSA had recruited and was training 250 new examiners this year and was looking for 200 more to add to its books “focusing on areas where demand is the highest”.
She said “fixing this issue is a priority” and added: “We want learners who are ready to pass to be able to take their test quickly and easily at a location that’s convenient for them. We don’t want them to feel the need to take difficult decisions and compromises when it comes to taking a practical test.
“And we need concrete measures that will make a real difference, and that’s why we’ve asked the DVSA to look at how their tests are booked and managed.”
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