Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many driving examiners there have been across (a) St Helens Metropolitan Borough, (b) the North West and (c) the UK in each year since 2015.

The table below shows the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) headcount of operational driving examiners (DE) for Great Britain by year since 2015. It also shows the DE headcount of St Helens Metropolitan Borough, which is solely St Helens driving test centre and the North West as defined by the Office for National Statistics.

The DVSA does not hold data relating to DEs in Northern Ireland. Practical driver and rider testing is delivered by the Driver and Vehicle Agency (DVA).

The DVSA recognise the high demand for learners wanting to take their practical driving test and is working hard to provide as many practical driving test appointments as possible. The DVSA is recruiting more than 300 additional DEs across Great Britain to help meet the increasing demand for driving tests and has offered financial incentives in some geographical areas where there are particular difficulties recruiting DEs.

The DVSA has a number of measures in place to increase the availability of driving tests, which includes: offering a national recovery allowance and annual leave buy back to driving examiners, asking all those qualified to conduct tests, but who do not do so as part of their current day job, to return to conducting tests, and conducting out of hours testing (such as on public holidays and weekends). In addition, we have asked management grades to conduct testing up to 40% of their time and looked at other colleagues across the business, who are qualified to deliver tests, and sought to use them to help deliver tests.