Learner drivers face more than a year of continued frustration after the Transport Secretary admitted the government's target to cut driving test waiting times to seven weeks will not be met until autumn next year.
Heidi Alexander told MPs on Wednesday that average wait times last month stood at nearly 22 weeks, according to Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency figures, despite a series of changes designed to crack down on touts and bots hoarding test slots. Before the pandemic, the typical wait was about five weeks.
“Transport Secretary admits driving test wait time target cut to seven weeks will not be met until autumn 2026.”
The DVSA had initially aimed to reduce the backlog to seven weeks by the end of 2025, a deadline Alexander pushed back to summer 2026 even before conceding on Wednesday that even that would not be possible. “Demand is still very high,” she told a committee, acknowledging there was “still a lot of work to do”.
Alexander insisted the government had “done a lot” to tackle the issue, pointing to a 70% drop in test swaps since new rules came into force in June. From 9 June, drivers can only move their test to one of the three test centres closest to their original booking, a measure intended to stop learners booking the soonest available slot anywhere and then swapping it to a local centre. Since March, only two changes can be made to a booked slot. And since 12 May, only pupils themselves can book a test – not instructors or anyone else.
The changes follow a BBC investigation in December that found driving instructors were being offered kickbacks of up to £250 a month to sell their login details to touts, who then resold slots at inflated prices. The BBC has repeatedly heard from learners who ended up buying test slots from resellers for many times the official cost.
Alexander said it was too early to draw firm conclusions from the latest reforms, but noted “speculative booking” appeared to have reduced. She also reported a net increase of 147 driving examiners in the 12 months to May, though recruitment and retention remain long-running problems.
“My aspiration is to get us back down to a point where when someone is booking a test, they're not having to wait months on end to get one, which is the situation for some people in some locations at the moment,” she said.