Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency is taking to reduce waiting times for practical tests in Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard constituency.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) priority is to reduce car practical driving test waiting times, whilst upholding road safety standards. To increase the number of available test slots, it is conducting tests outside of regular hours, including at weekends and on public holidays, and buying back annual leave from driving examiners.

To increase the number of car driving test slots, the DVSA deployed eligible managers and administrative staff back on the front line to do driving tests from the beginning of October 2023 until the end of March 2024, which created over 145,000 additional test slots.

Driving examiners from areas with lower waiting times continue to travel and test in those centres with longer waiting times. This is in addition to the DVSA recruiting additional examiners at Luton, Leighton Buzzard and Aylesbury driving test centres that serve the Dunstable and Leighton Buzzard constituency.

The DVSA’s examiner recruitment campaigns are ongoing across the country but, like many employers, the DVSA is finding the job market extremely competitive. As it moves through each recruitment campaign, the DVSA will continually review and make changes and improvements to its recruitment and selection processes.