To want to know why the government hasn’t sorted out the driving test booking mess yet

Booking a doctor's appointment is pretty much the same. It's insane. And utterly depressing.

Why should instructors be able to book tests though? Why not leave it to each learner, then everyone would be in the same boat. Surely the driving instructors in this case MUST be using bots? It’s impossible for me to find any tests at any time on any date within an hours drive from me. I have been trying countless times for weeks. How are instructors doing this without bot?

DD had the testi app, which worked really well. She then also phoned up once, because she was locked out for making too many changes, which is an anti bot device. The call handler was great, and booked her in manually, and locally. Maybe she just got lucky, or they have better access.

I understand that well.
It's so frustrating isn't it. I do wish they would take into account those of us that need adjustments/higher priority or at least the different impact it has on us.

Why on earth don’t they allow the passing of the theory test to last longer than two years. There are millions of drivers who have never even taken one because they didn’t exist back in the day. Surely things don’t change so often that a theory test will be out of date so quickly. If they did then it would be necessary to keep testing existing drivers wouldn’t it.

There was a consultation about this a few months ago (I think we were invited to participate just after passing).

Luckily DD(18) passed this summer.

Once she had passed her theory we spent 3 x Monday 6am’s trying to book her a test ANYWHERE and ended up booking her into a test centre 75 miles away in Wales 5 months later. (Her instructor had told her to try to get things sorted after the second or third lesson). I think I had to go through 4 or 5 pages of ‘close’ sites before I found one.

I spent £10 on the Testi app and was able to get alerts for 3 “local” test centres. It took me a couple of months, but I eventually managed to get a local centre about 7 weeks earlier than the one we had booked. It was quite a late switch, and not the centre she’d been practising near, so she spent a couple of days studiously looking at old test routes from the site on Youtube and DH took her out for about 10 hours too.

If DC is ready to sit their test I thought there was an option to look for “short notice” tests? I think you might need a test booked to be able to swap, though.

It must be such a nightmare for rural kids.

not sure where you live but nationally it’s much more common for a self employed person. The large driving schools charge the instructor a huge amount for a car and pupils and it’s very difficult to make a living under those franchised conditions but that’s a by the way. Local ADis do help each other out but the issue is lack of test slots available. It’s rare that 2 ADIs in a small geographical area will have 2 pupils who are in those circumstances.

This ^ too
I googled average salary of a driving instructor and it’s not much.

I don’t see that round here. It obviously varies a lot.

Couldn’t they club together with other ‘one man bands’ with regards to test bookings to make things run more efficiently? Surely it would help them to keep the flow of students moving.

if it’s possible to book multiple tests on one theory pass number then that’s an easy fix, surely??

I expect the people are DVLA are working to try and fix this but it isn't simple as there are a few different elements to it (as pointed out by other pps) and each need different fixes eg:

1. Bots and resellers: could be fixed by tech upgrades but expensive to do so
2. Lack of instructors who can actually do the tests: recruiting and training them will take 6months or so, probably much longer, and they would have to be on short term contracts as the covid backlog will eventually be dealt with- meaning that people may be less willing to apply as there would be no work for them after a while. The upfront cost of recruitment etc would also be high even though it would pay for itself through more tests after a while
3. People from missing tests/turning up without the tings they need etc: would be quite hard to fix, fines could help but by wasting the money they've paid for a test these people are effectively already paying a fine and clearly that isn't stopping them

Those are just examples. Essentially, these things are a bit of a nightmare to organise!

Because most ADI’s are self employed one man / woman band. They don’t have a huge number of pupils at any one time.

Isn’t that the case now? @WrigglyDonCat (an ADI) seems to suggest that it is.

we have used the same school of motoring for both of our dc. They encourage students to take their theory tests as soon as they can, and then their admin book the tests for each individual. That has been in approximately 6 months time for both of our dc. They then have control of the tests. They brought dc1’s test forward and they passed first time.

dc2 is recovering from breaking his wrist and it looks like he’ll need to have his test pushed back a bit. The school of motoring will sort this - they are big enough that there are other learners who are ready to take their test sooner than their test date.

This seems a very sensible system to me. They have a high first time pass rate too which means that the same learner doesn’t need multiple test slots. I’m not sure why this seems so unusual.

Absolute tosh. My local MP is trying to sort out the Driving Test shambles & also supports Net Zero.

you’ve been watching too much GB news.

Our teen got up at 5am and managed to get into the queue with 5000 in front of her. Got a test for April. Booking a driving test shouldn't be like booking Taylor Swift tickets!

Have you told your MP? What was their response?

There really are simple solutions to this.

The biggest issue is the reselling companies who are block booking and using bots to book slots.

If reselling was banned then that market dies overnight.

When booking you must enter your driving license number and only that person can take the test, do not allow it to be changed or updated.

If you need to change your slot then you can do so directly with the test centre, you do not swap with someone else you give up the slot you have booked and book a new one.

You will still have a lack of testers and a longer waiting list than most people would like but you have got rid of the resellers overnight.

It's just ridiculous, we didn't have this issue when ds took his test 2 years ago.

DD was ready for her test a few months ago, nearest one we could book was Jan '26 so we paid for the Testi app. Every cancellation would go in seconds. So dd paid for another app and I paid for a third one (costing us about £50 all together). Again, any cancellation that would flag up would go in seconds and if she quickly pressed on it it would buffer and then a message pop up to say the slot had been taken, we were going round in circles.

Her driving instructor has managed to get her a cancellation for next Monday but God knows how long she will have to wait if she fails.

Problem with that is that the theory test only lasts two years.

Pretty much.

They could resolve this in a week or two with a couple of developers.

DS passed his theory in October. The earliest available test ( 5 miles away) is March. His friend is taking his test in Aberdeen this week ( friend is Cheshire based! )Absolutely insanely stupid all of this and so frustrating!

You're right of course, and it is because they don't give a shit about young people. No government has for decades. It would be so easy to fix, there's no reason that they haven't, other than they just don't want to.

Can you do this though:

book a test that’s not suitable really
keep looking for a better test
book the better test then cancel the original?

I don’t think you’d be able to book the new test without cancelling the unsuitable one first, can you? Does ANYONE know this?

It’s the lack of information that I find also irritating. People are relying on rumour and hearsay and getting up at 6am and hoping.

It’s a scandal really, and regardless of where it is in their priorities, they have enough MOs for one of them to be given the task to oversee a fix. They are failing young people here.

Absolute rubbish. My dh is a driving instructor and it’s causing a whole heap of problems for them. They have to guess way in advance as to when a pupil may be ready for test as, in the past, they could say with more certainty about a month before that the pupil should book a test. now they’re in the position of a pupil with a booked test and not actually test ready. This causes upset when the pupil is told to move the test as the waiting time is sooo long. Many pupils decide to go to test anyway in their own cars “just to see”. This causes more delays in the system because you have lots of pupils going to a test that they won’t or shouldn’t pass and pupils who are ready can’t get that test slot. This is in addition to these companies that buy up all the driving test slots available. It’s a complete nightmare and I would suggest anyone affected should email their MP and make some noise about it.