Tips for getting a driving test

[Headstones250]

I live in north London, so there is absolutely no shortage of test centres nearby, but not one has a single spot available in the coming months.

What is the knack to getting a test? I can't keep shelling out £30 a week for lessons indefinitely!

There is a site where you can pay a nominal fee and select the test centres you are happy to go to, and when they have cancellations they send you an SMS - you need to reply to confirm booking. It's called Find Me A Driving Test - I'm in the same boat, test ready but I can't get one until March!

Get on the DVLA website at 6am Monday morning. It's when the new slots are released according to DD. Once you have a test booked you can get app that finds cancellations. You have to be quick though as cancellations tend to be snappped up. DD's test is in July (booked mid-Jan) which is ridiculous. It's an appalling failing system so good luck.

My son paid a fee to the his driving school/instructor and they guaranteed they would get a test within a few weeks. Does your instructor offer that? At the time there were no tests available around us to book on the website no matter how many months in advance we looked.

Take any test you can to begin with, 6am on Monday morning that has been suggested.

if not keep looking at random times regularly throughout the day for cancellations.

We managed to get a test for middle of February the other day randomly. But DD is more than test ready.

Book a test for a few months time at any location. Download the Testi app and set alerts for the test centres you want. As soon as you get a notification, go to the site and change the test. You can change the date or location up to 8 times.

This app is £17.99 and you select your test centres and data/times you want and it can auto book any that come up. 6am Monday morning is also the time to look, but the earliest date you will get through that will now be July.

Thanks. These are really helpful tips.

If I spend a bit of money now on using third party bookers to bring the date forward, then I'll hopefully save it down the line with fewer driving lessons.

By the way, anyone know how the third party agencies are allowed to operate? It all seems a bit Wild West!

My ds booked a test at a random test centre. We looked into getting one of the apps but thought he would first try himself on the govt test rebooking website to rebook to one nearer us.
Tried at 6am on Monday and then throughout the day. One came up early afternoon for a location we wanted. We noticed that lots of new ones in various places did pop up randomly over the course of the Monday.