2 hours ago 8 minutes ago
Katy AustinTransport correspondent
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The driving trial backlog won't beryllium reduced to the people of 7 weeks until autumn adjacent year, the Transport Secretary has said.
Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) figures amusement the mean waiting clip to publication a trial past period was astir 22 weeks.
Last November, Heidi Alexander announced changes aimed astatine cutting agelong waits and preventing trial slots getting booked up - including by bots - and resold astatine inflated prices.
Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the hold clip was astir 5 weeks.
The DVSA initially had a people of reducing the mean waiting clip to 7 weeks by the extremity of 2025.
Alexander pushed this backmost to summertime 2026, but admitted past November adjacent that would not beryllium possible.
She told a Committee of MPs connected Wednesday that she understood people's frustrations and insisted the authorities has done a batch to tackle the issue.
However she added that "demand is inactive precise high" and acknowledged determination was inactive a batch of enactment to do.
The BBC has repeatedly heard from learner drivers frustrated by the trouble of booking tests when, and where, they request them.
Some person ended up buying slots from resellers who complaint galore times the authoritative outgo of taking a driving test.
In the past fewer months, a fig of changes to the trial booking strategy person been introduced arsenic portion of efforts to combat the problem.
At the extremity of March, a caller regularisation was brought successful that lone 2 changes could beryllium made to a booked slot, for illustration the day oregon trial centre location.
From 9 June, if you privation to determination your test, you tin lone determination it to the 3 trial centres closest to wherever your trial is booked.
This is meant to halt learners booking the soonest slot available, wherever it is, past swapping it to a determination person to home.
The Transport Secretary told MPs it was excessively aboriginal to gully conclusions, but that determination was already grounds of little speculative booking since the latest changes were brought in. For example, she said the measurement of trial swaps had gone down by 70%.
"My aspiration is to get america backmost down to a constituent wherever erstwhile idiosyncratic is booking a test, they're not having to hold months connected extremity to get one, which is the concern for immoderate radical successful immoderate locations astatine the moment," she said.
One issues which has antecedently been highlighted is the contented of recruiting and retaining capable driving examiners.
Alexander said determination had been a nett summation successful examiners of 147 successful the 12 months to May.
She besides said the figures connected mean hold times published truthful acold "have not been peculiarly helpful" truthful determination volition beryllium a alteration to routinely published statistic "broken down by driving trial centre arsenic well".
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