Efforts to hire more practical driving test examiners in the UK have achieved limited success, with just 3 percent of applicants receiving job offers. Last year, only 327 out of 11,132 candidates secured positions, despite multiple recruitment initiatives aimed at reducing lengthy waiting times.
Persistent Backlog Challenges
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) has launched 19 recruitment campaigns since 2021 to address average wait times of 22 weeks for practical driving tests. The National Audit Office recently highlighted the need for 400 additional examiners to expand the current workforce of 1,556 and meet the target of seven weeks by the end of 2027.
High resignation rates complicate these efforts, with about 12 percent of examiners—roughly 186 individuals—leaving annually. Factors include a typical salary of £28,000 and job-related stress. As a result, the net increase stands at around 140 examiners, representing just one-third of the required 400.
Political and Industry Reactions
Richard Holden, shadow transport minister, criticized the situation, stating: “Labour’s handling of driving tests is a failure so spectacular it takes genuine effort to achieve. People desperate to drive are stuck paying for lessons they don’t need, watching their insurance bills climb, waiting months for a test slot that never materialises with waiting times having increased by a month since the General Election. Nothing could be more symptomatic of Labour’s contempt for young people and a practical example of their war on drivers that they’re so abjectly failing to allow people to take a test to get people behind the wheel.”
Waiting times have risen sharply from five weeks in February 2020 to 22 weeks last year, per National Audit Office data.
Calls for Improvement
The AA notes that the applicant drop-out rate appears excessively high and urges the DVSA to accelerate the hiring process. Emma Bush, managing director of AA driving school, remarked: “While not everyone who applies for the role will be suitable and some level of drop-out rate is to be expected, this does seem high. This issue must remain under scrutiny as learners still face lengthy waits to get a test—impacting their ability to access work, education and facilitate their social lives and caring responsibilities.”
