The Tories may no longer run the United Kingdom, but that doesn’t mean TERF Island’s problems are a thing of the past. Not by a long shot. For example, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency is currently experiencing an examiner shortage, and, as a result, the average wait time for new drivers to get their licenses is now a whopping five months, Autocar reports. That’s just the national average, too. At more than half of all testing centers, you’re looking at a wait of six months or more. Oof.
While you couldn’t exactly book a next-day appointment before, the long waits for driver’s licenses have gotten significantly worse over the last year, too. Since February 2024, the number of locations with wait times of at least six months nearly doubled, while the national average grew from about 3.5 months to a full five over the same period. And that isn’t some unofficial estimate, either. Those are official DVSA figures.
As one AA Driving School spokesperson told Autocar, it’s a problem that’s been growing worse ever since the pandemic:
During all those lockdowns, driving tests are one of the things that were stop-start because of various restrictions at different points,” she said. “It’s understandable how [the backlog] built up because you ended up with people who had been hoping to take their tests and then they couldn’t, or they couldn’t have lessons. There was pent-up demand as we all came out of lockdown and things got back to normal, but that pent-up demand has never been satisfied.
Supply and demand
That certainly sounds bad, but don’t worry, the DVSA is already on top of it. Recently, it updated the terms and conditions people must agree to in order to book or cancel an appointment. Allegedly, this will allow it to crack down on resellers that book a large number of appointments and then resell those slots. As you can imagine, not everyone thinks that goes far enough:
But these measures are only addressing the symptoms of the backlog and not the root cause, according to Lee. “It is a capacity issue – supply and demand – and there has just not been enough supply of test slots to fulfil the demand,” she said. “If that was sorted out, then some of the peripheral issues that are talked about would be [resolved].”
Lee noted that when the DVSA temporarily boosted test capacity by 150,000 slots between October 2023 and March 2024, “you could start to see average waiting times come down”. However, it “was not enough overall” to resolve the full backlog, and because it was not sustained, “it just cranked back up again and now it’s higher than ever”.
Hiring more workers would actually help the DVSA work through its backlog of appointments, and so far, it’s promised to hire an additional 450 examiners, which would increase its total by nearly 30 percent. Actually hiring those examiners may be more difficult than anticipated, though, thanks to low pay and unpleasant working conditions. One independent driving instructor told Autocar he turned down an offer to become an examiner for exactly those reasons. And with about 130 of the 1600 or so examiners expected to quit this year, many of those new hires will simply be replacing outgoing employees.
You’d think the people in charge would look at the shortage and raise wages to attract more examiners, but at least for now, that doesn’t appear to be part of the plan. Maybe another pizza party would work? Wait, what’s the British equivalent of a pizza party?
