Asked by: Lorraine Beavers (Labour - Blackpool North and Fleetwood)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps her Department is taking to increase the availability of practical driving tests in Blackpool North and Fleetwood constituency.
Answered by Lilian Greenwood - Parliamentary Under-Secretary (Department for Transport)
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) main priority is to reduce car practical driving test waiting times, whilst upholding road safety standards.
Measures in place to reduce waiting times for customers at all driving test centres (DTC), include the recruitment of new driving examiners (DE), conducting tests outside regular hours, including at weekends and on public holidays, and buying back annual leave from DEs. DVSA also continues to deploy DEs from areas with lower waiting times into those where waiting times are longer.
Blackpool's current DTC is a temporary base. DVSA has identified a new location for Blackpool DTC and has been working through the planning process. If successful in opening a new DTC at this site, this should allow an increase in capacity in the number of DEs, with an overall capacity of 10 DEs.
As part of recent recruitment at DTCs that serve the Blackpool North and Fleetwood constituency, DVSA has three potential new examiners currently in training.