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

That’s what my DS did. He wasn’t quite ready for his driving test but didn’t want to have to wait six months for another test slot so he took a chance and failed. He ended up having to wait another six months for his second test anyway and the test slot he took up for his first test was wasted. It’s a stupid system.

Why not just make it impossible to change the driving licence number on a test? They could still allow people to cancel it or change the date/location - wouldn’t that stop bots snapping them all up for resale?

Try 10am today, I managed to get a test around 10am on a Monday as they'd released new timeslots. Worth a try.
Get a test for anywhere in country then try and change it.
Go on the website several times a day, keep refreshing to look for cancellations.
Ime the apps like testi etc no longer work- they alert you if a test you can IMMEDIATELY click on link but it's gone and no longer there.
So just use dvla website, refresh refresh refresh.
It's a complete pita and definitely not for for purpose.
I think part of the issue is driving examiners arent well paid, 26-30k a year, so they make more money as driving instructors so I think recruitment is, also an issue.

That sums up just about everything about the UK public sector these days, doesn't it? Uselessness, ineptitude, apathy and fiddling while Rome burns, accompanied by lots of performative head scratching and endless talking about how they plan to investigate or reform, instead of actually investigating and reforming swifty and effectively. It just pushes the can further down the road in the hope of making it the next government's problem.

I used a service to find a test for my son. They offer cancelled test slots so it was very helpful. It will cost more, but you need to decide if it's worth paying a little more.

So much of the civil service is in disarray after the Tories. The current government started a review of everything when they got in so they will get round to this, but honestly, DSLA is not a priority for all of us. Look at border control, financial control, health, prisons, policing, local government. Do I need to go on? Our country is a mess and I sincerely hope noone ever votes Tory again because noone is being held accountable for where the money has gone, but we all know the rich got massively richer under the tories.

I know the skill of driving is key for young people but public transport for most of us still works OK. I don't know the answer but I do know my first proper job after graduating required a driving licence so appreciate not having a driving licence could be career limiting.

They can’t stop the bots, technically the people setting them up and running these sites are doing nothing illegal, they are offering a service that members of the public are willing to pay for and use and as such they remain profitable do they keep going. If they were pretending to be the DVSA/DVLA and misleading customers then they could be stopped, but they aren’t, they write in the T&Cs and on the websites that they are not part of the official government dept and are charging extra for admin.

They use a theory test over and over that they get from people who don’t want to pass… they probably get paid to take the test and sell the reference

So how do the bots do it?!

I don’t understand how the bots manage it. If we are booking we have to evidence a pass in the theory test. How do they override that?

My son’s instructor pays someone £50 and they have found him a local test within 2 weeks, he failed his first test and his next one is in 3 weeks locally.
no idea how he does it but it’s worth the extra £50

@HeadDeskHeadDesk
You cannot book a practical driving test without passing your theory test first

it’s a joke…. i only refreshed about 25 times then this happens----

As you can presumably still defer (as you could back when I took mine many years ago) I think that sounds eminently sensible. God knows why it should be such a bloody mess, but then it's pretty typical of just about everything that calls under the auspices of public services these days.

The block booking and re-selling thing is disgraceful. Whichever civil servants are in charge of running the driving test department should lose their job.

I'd also recommend everyone gets their theory out of the way first. I know someone who has failed her theory several times and her instructor is putting pressure on her to keep her lessons up regularly for longer than is really necessary and it's costing her a fortune. But I guess if she pauses her lessons she loses her place and then she'll be rusty once she gets a test through.

If everyone had to pass their theory before they could start their lessons it would free up logjams in the availability of instructors as well.

DS passed his theory at the start of October. Did the Monday morning thing and got him a test for mid March. I have paid more money to a test finding website to see if we can get a cancellation.

Well that's a stupid oversimplification.

But hey, when the sea levels rise and the air is unbreathable at least we'll have cars.

You don’t even need to do that, make it so it’s linked to your provisional licence and non transferable, with a full refund if you cancel more than one week out from your test. It immediately puts an end to resale. There’s absolutely no need to be able to transfer a test slot to a different driver.

How does that work when you can’t book a test until you have passed the theory test?

They surely still must book a test and pass it? The content is not really relevant here.

Whenever I see an available test they disappear before I can press select. They disappear instantaneously.

So we have a test booked miles away. If I go on and see one in our locality (that would be a MIRACLE. In the 50 or so times I’ve gone on there has NEVER been one within an hour of here), how do I book it if we already have a test booked? Because if I cancel our current test, but the time I log back in the test I want will be gone.

Absolutely. This wouldn’t sort out the whole mess in an instant. But apparently there are reviews going on as to how to sort out the situation. What’s all the head scratching for???

I have managed to- after countless Mondays at 5:30 logging on etc to finally - finally - book a test in 6 months time for a centre 4 hours drive away. Totally useless obviously, but having a test booked allows me to pay a fortune to a bot to get them to swap it for one in my locality. Make this make sense!!!

I remember that my driving instructor booked the test when she thought I was ready. Why centralise such a thing? Never works. Also, it's yet another place to be hacked for names and addresses, etc. or to go down in the next 'incident'.

Let’s imagine you need to learn to drive as soon as possible and you’ve been told there’s a long wait for tests. Do you book now, in the hope you will be ready in six months, or do you wait until you are ready, then book a year for six months after that? They are very sensibly thinking ahead and projecting when they might be ready.

Reselling is a product of that problem, not the cause of it.

You do need to enter your theory pass number when booking a test though

Add it to the long list of things that are clearly broken, there is a clear solution to - and yet for some reason they just… don’t.

Probably doing a £100m ten-year investigation into what the problem is and what the options are to resolve it, which will balloon to a billion pounds by 2030 with no resolution.