New DVSA driving licence rules 'quietly' introduced last week slammed

New DVSA driving licence rules 'quietly' introduced last week slammed
-Credit:Reach Publishing Services Limited


New DVSA rule changes have quietly been introduced in the UK. The DVSA rule shake-up came into force last week after being criticised by motorists, drivers and road users up and down the country including Birmingham for long delays.

The DVSA says it is recruiting 450 new driving examiners in a bid to slash test waiting times from 21 weeks to just seven weeks by December 2025. Transport minister Lord Hendy told the House of Lords that the first group of new recruits is already "about to start doing driving tests".

Conservative Party peer Lord Young of Cookham has raised concerns about "middlemen hoovering up slots" on the DVSA website and asked in the Housr of Lords this week: "Why doesn't the Government just get on with this and ban this racket?"

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Former Transport Secretary Lord Grayling asked: "Why is it that any driving test can be booked anywhere except the official DVSA website?" Transport minister Lord Hendy responded that changes must be implemented carefully "so that we don't inadvertently make it more difficult for legitimate people looking for tests to book them".

Lord Hendy explained that a "quarter of total test bookings had been swapped from one licence to another" as part of legitimate instructor practices. He noted that "driving instructors can apply for a test for one pupil and then transfer it to another if the second pupil is making faster progress than the first".

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"We have to do that in a way which doesn't prevent driving instructors from running decent businesses and also allows people to change their bookings when they need to," he added. Conservative peer Lord Hannan blamed "state failure" for the rise of secondary markets in driving test slots.

Lord Hannan urged government employees, meanwhile, to "return to office work". Lord Henry said: "The one thing that driving examiners can't do is work in an office."