Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what the (a) average and (b) longest waiting time was for a driving test in each of the the test centres in the North East region in each of the last ten years.

To aid retention and to encourage existing driving examiners (DE) to stay in role, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is making an exceptional payment of £5,000 to DEs and eligible roles (divided into two payments) over the next 12 months. By keeping more experienced driving examiners and bringing in new ones, DVSA will lose less testing capacity from the system, making more tests available for learner drivers.

Examiner capacity is rising, with 1,542 FTE examiners now in post (the highest since 2021) as of December 2025.

DEs are civil servants and as such, their salary is determined by the Civil Service Pay Remit Guidance. The guidance sets out the financial parameters Civil Service departments can use to determine pay awards for their staff. DVSA cannot act independently from this guidance. DVSA continues to look at different financial incentives to recruit examiners and, indeed, to offer to existing employees conducting tests.

The attached excel spreadsheet shows the (a) average and (b) highest waiting time for driving test centres (DTC) in the North East of England, from the financial year 2015/16 to the financial year-to-date (YTD). Please note, that DVSA does not hold data for Elswick and South Shields DTCs beyond 2022/23, due to these centres closing.