Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps he is taking to help reduce waiting times for practical driving tests.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) main priority is to reduce car practical driving test waiting times, whilst upholding road safety standards.

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. Eligible managers and administrative staff will continue to spend a portion of their time conducting car tests in the coming months to help continue to reduce waiting times.

Measures in place to reduce waiting times for customers, including: the recruitment of driving examiners, conducting tests outside of regular hours, including at weekends and on public holidays, and buying back annual leave from driving examiners is creating, on average, over 48,300 extra car test slots each month.