Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent steps she has taken to increase (a) the number of driving instructors and (b) practical driving test availability.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) licenses approved driving instructors for them to provide paid tuition.

To help increase practical driving test availability, the DVSA is recruiting more than 300 driving examiners across Great Britain. The DVSA’s examiner recruitment campaigns continue to be successful 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 process, and training courses.

The DVSA is working hard to provide as many practical driving test appointments as it can, with several measures in place to do this.

These include:

• 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 where capacity allows;
• conducting out of hours testing (such as on public holidays and weekends); and
• resuming the number of driving tests per day to seven for each full-time examiner.