Driving Instruction: Recruitment

(asked on 8th November 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 28 September 2021 to Question 51863, what recent progress has been made on the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency's plan to recruit 300 new driving examiners; and how many and what proportion of the examiners recruited as at July 2021 were actively conducting practical driving tests on a full-time basis as at 8 November 2021.


Answered by
Trudy Harrison Portrait
Trudy Harrison
This question was answered on 15th November 2021

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) has an ongoing campaign to increase the number of examiners by recruiting around 300 driving examiners between 1 April 2021 and June 2022. As at 8 November 2021, 190 examiners have been recruited.

42 of these examiners that were recruited during this period were actively conducting practical driving tests on a full-time basis as at 8 November 2021. A total of 62 have completed training into driving test centres.

As a result of all previous recruitment campaigns, there are 75 people either attending, or booked to attend, their training between now and January 2022. There are 53 candidates who are at various stages of the pre-employment checks awaiting confirmation of start date.

A new exercise will launch w/c 15 November 2021 to recruit to maintain a continued pipeline of new entrants into training courses January / February 2022 onwards.

To support the recruitment campaign, the Agency is also exploring options to temporarily contract in experienced driving assessors from other road safety organisations to become driving examiners.

The DVSA has put a number of measures in place to increase practical driving tests and reduce waiting times. These include offering a national recovery allowance and annual leave buy back to 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).

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