Driving test booking rules tightened after thousands of no shows

Learner drivers are present lone capable to swap their trial to the 3 centres nearest to their archetypal booking determination successful a bid to chopped down waiting times.

It comes arsenic authoritative figures shared exclusively with the BBC suggest no-one turned up to instrumentality 64,500 applicable driving tests past year.

The mean hold for applicable driving tests crossed Britain are longer than 5 months. The caller rules volition halt learners booking the soonest trial disposable anywhere, past making a bid of swaps to get a slot person to home.

Learner operator Emma told the BBC she was waking up astatine 05:30 each Monday to effort to publication a trial lone to find herself successful a queue of thousands. She present has a trial successful 7 months time.

In England the hold clip for a driving trial is 22.7 weeks, Scotland 22.9 weeks and successful Wales 17.3 weeks, according to figures provided to the BBC by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) for April 2026.

Last year, 1,998,608 driving tests were booked successful the UK but nary 1 turned up for 64,500 of them meaning 3.2% were wasted, according to the DVSA.

Some of these were booked by 3rd enactment resellers utilizing bots with the volition of charging inflated prices but were incapable to merchantability them, the BBC understands.

The fig of nary shows past twelvemonth was higher than the 52,000 recorded the erstwhile year.

Emma, not her existent name, is 21 and has been learning to thrust successful West London for astir a year.

"Some of my friends who request to thrust for enactment were booking tests astatine trial centres not section to them successful areas that they hadn't truly driven before...just truthful that they could get the trial and conscionable effort and walk arsenic accelerated arsenic they could," she said.

Emma managed to publication a trial adjacent to wherever she lives but it is not for 7 months.

"I'm past paying for lessons each week, which is fine, it's bully to person the practice, but erstwhile you've got truthful agelong until your test, it's conscionable a small spot of a discarded of wealth and a monolithic clip burden," she said.

Emma's driving teacher Donovan has been utilizing his section trial centre for 10 years.

"At 1 point, I didn't person a trial determination for six months, simply due to the fact that nary of my students could get 1 astatine booking there," helium said.

"Effectively, you had radical booking tests successful Scotland conscionable to get the day and past changing it to London erstwhile 1 became available," helium said.

He hopes the changes "will trim radical booking tests that they person nary volition of taking" and "free up a spot much abstraction connected the booking system".

However, Carly Brookfield, main enforcement of the Driving Instructors Association, says the manufacture "doesn't person a immense magnitude of assurance that immoderate of these measures are realistically fixing the booking strategy problem".

Ann Harvey contacted BBC Your Voice past period aft her teenage lad had failed to get a trial successful Reading and yet sat his driving trial successful Bury St Edmunds, much than 130 miles away.

"I was besides shocked by the fig of nary shows listed astatine Bury St Edmunds. Usually 30 per day! There should beryllium a punishment for not turning up," she said.

Beverley Warmington, DVSA's main executive, said: "The determination restrictions introduced connected 9 June volition assistance to deter bookings astatine locations wherever learners bash not mean to instrumentality their test."

She added that the DVSA was "determined to trim waiting times further" and had delivered much than 217,000 further tests betwixt June 2025 and April 2026 partially utilizing subject driving examiners.