Help with booking a driving test

[Ineedcoffeenow]

We’ve been trying to book DD a driving test over the last couple of weeks. For the first time, we could just chose any date and then it brought up possible dates around that time that we could then select. However, this time around it’s not showing any test dates for miles around. Has the system changed so that it will only search on the precise date selected?

No it's just there are virtually nothing tests and it's like a lottery booking one, there is as a thread about it this morning.
Advice is to log in at6amon Monday morning and try and/ or keep checking several times a day.
Book a test anywhere in country as its a bit easier to amend a booking than it is to get one in the first place.
However if you do this so it a long time in the future to give you best chance of being able to amend it in time.

As a PP said, it’s just an awful situation.

In Feb 2025, I could only book a test seven months away. Failed that and got a second one five months away. If I pass that, that’s a year of paying for driving lessons because the system is so bad.

I managed to get a test booked for 200 miles away for mid-May and we’ve now signed up for the Testi app to change it to a more local site.

Apparently what people are doing is booking a test then once in the system its easier to get a swap/cancellation. Its an absolute nightmare, my dh is an ADI and the whole system is a joke, he has taken a pupil out of area before now to somewhere neither of them have driven before (fortunately the pupil passed) but thats not ideal at all.

I might have misunderstood your post but if you are test ready will your instructor not allow you to put lessons on hold and then pick up again nearer the test date? I know my dh does that with his pupils, if they are test ready he won't keep taking their money unnecessarily and will make sure he can fit them in again nearer the time.

DD is in this situation. She’s ready to take her test (again—2nd time), but her instructor will not allow her to drop any lessons at all. I understand he has a living to make, but we’re facing another £1k in lessons when she would be ready to take her test now. It’s very frustrating.

Thats a shame he won't allow that as its an awful lot of money to be paying out when she is test ready, the whole shambles of a situation is really frustrating for instructors too, DH was effing and jeffing earlier when I asked whats wrong he said another pupil has had their test cancelled. It needs sorting thats for sure.

It sounds very frustrating to have to work within such a system. You can wait months for an instructor to have availability around here so we have to keep the lessons going. DD is having to travel back from uni every week, which is a pain in the ass too.

Mine will let me do that, but I don’t like to leave it too long between lessons because I forget things too easily! I’ve dropped from a lesson a week to one a fortnight, and will try and go back up to once a week after Xmas. But even once a fortnight costs me £180 per month. I WISH the government would sort this out.

Are you looking on the booking website before 6am?

Has your DD looked into whether there are driving instructors in her university area who'd be willing to take her on? My DCs' instructor is happy to allow people to pause lessons until shortly before the test slot, so not all instructors operate in the way your DD's does, which frankly seems pretty exploitative!

Go on DVLA website on Mondays before 6am when tests are all released. My DD booked one in 6 months time by doing that for a few weeks and then got lucky.

Testi won't work
You need test shift and to pay premium so that it will automatically book a test that it finds (within dates and times that you set)
Testi finds slots but by the time you have clicked on the notification they're gone.

Have successfully moved a test for both centre and date with test shift in the last three months. Testi didn't even notify of anything coming up free.

Yes, we’ve been trying at 6am each Monday. Nothing at all, even though we got on literally in under a minute.

I echo the advice about being in the queue Monday morning just before 6am, that’s how we booked our DS first test in July that he took in September. Sadly he didn’t pass but I randomly checked the website on the Thursday at 13.00 and managed to book a test for 2 weeks away! There were 4 slots to choose from so I’m assuming an extra examiner was working?
Thankfully he passed that one but it was just a horrific experience and felt unnecessarily stressful
Good luck!

My daughter failed her first test on Friday so I feel your pain. I booked a random test and used Testi to try and find a cancellation. I’ve now got a a new test in 3 weeks but it took me most of yesterday to get it! I find by the time a cancellation appears on the app it’s too late. But it does highlight movement so if you login and wait, move between test centres you may be lucky. You have to be quick though, yesterday on 3 occasions I tried to get a slot but just got errors when clicking through. Also I got blocked a few times by Dvsa because it thought I was a bot. Clearing cookies fixed that.
its a ridiculous system. Good luck!

We’re now on Testi. A test came up on Tuesday, but DD wasn’t near her phone so she missed it. Absolutely nothing else has come up (at least Testi has not sent out any notifications.) I’m thinking about subscribing to one that automatically books tests so I’m not constantly looking at my phone, but it’s £15 per week and I don’t know whether it will do the job.

When did she do her theory test? As they wont show any tests after the date her theory runs out.

She passed it in July.

Test shift does this and it's a one off payment for premium
It works

Unfortunately Test Shift isn’t working—it just keeps saying they’re updating their servers.

Oh no, didn't realise as we used it a few weeks ago and then turned it off

Other than TestShift has anyone had success recently with a cancellation app?

Would like to know the same as you Treylime. I can't believe how much worse it's got just in the last 18 months. DVSA has come up with nothing, takes ages to pass it's stupid verification. Testi - nothing. Testshift - not working.

It's an absolute joke. DD has been ready for a month or so now and we can't bring her test any earlier than February, what bloody use is that? 🤬

We managed to get a test for mid December today. Testi brought up one test, but not the other 12 or so that were all released within 20 minutes of each other. It did help in the sense that it alerted us to the possibility of an update—we kept going for a while after and thankfully I managed to snatch another one. They were disappearing before our eyes, though. It’s evident that something has changed at our local test centre as there’s no way that 12 people all cancelled within 20 minutes of each other when there has been only 2 tests come through in the last month. They had tests for Sundays in December, too, which tells me that they’ve been able to release more dates.