Learner drivers face more than a year of grinding frustration after the transport secretary admitted the government will not meet its target to slash waiting times for a driving test until autumn 2026.
Heidi Alexander told a committee of MPs on Wednesday that the average wait to book a test is currently nearly 22 weeks – a far cry from the seven‑week goal she had originally hoped to reach by the end of this year. Before the Covid‑19 pandemic, the typical wait was about five weeks.
“Transport secretary Heidi Alexander says driving test wait time target of seven weeks will not be met until autumn 2026.”
“I understand people’s frustrations,” Alexander said, while insisting the government had “done a lot” to tackle the problem. But she added that “demand is still very high” and acknowledged there was still “a lot of work to do.”
The DVSA initially set a target of reducing the backlog to seven weeks by the end of 2025. Alexander pushed that back to summer 2026 last November, but now concedes even that will not be possible. The BBC has repeatedly heard from learner drivers who have struggled to book tests when and where they need them; some have resorted to buying slots from resellers who charge many times the official cost.
A BBC investigation in December found that some driving instructors were being offered kickbacks of up to £250 a month to sell their login details to touts. In response, the government has introduced a series of changes to the booking system. Since March, only two changes can be made to a booked slot – for example, the date or test centre location. From 12 May, only pupils themselves – not instructors or others – have been able to book a test. And from 9 June, anyone wanting to move their test can only switch to one of the three test centres closest to where the test is booked, a measure designed to stop learners booking the soonest available slot and then swapping it for a more convenient location.
Alexander told MPs it was too early to draw firm conclusions, but said there was already evidence of less speculative booking. “The volume of test swaps has gone down by 70%,” she reported.
One persistent issue has been recruiting and retaining enough driving examiners. Alexander said there had been a net increase of 147 examiners in the 12 months to May.
“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.
For those learners already resigned to waiting, the autumn of 2026 can feel a very long way off.