Terrible public services

[Firtreefiona]

I’ve been trying to book a driving test for ages and the best that I can come up with is a test centre 235 miles away in August. And that’s after many, any times of looking at different hours of different days. Is the driving test system the worst public service currently, or are others even worse? Keen to hear of worse public services to make me feel better.

You have my sympathy re the driving test backlog. I had to wait 6 months for my test in April 2025, failed due to nerves, then got blocked from the booking system due to too many searches. Despite contacting them and trying all the tricks I remained blocked for several months on all devices. In the meantime, my theory expired so I had to resit that before I could book again. Now finally booked another test at my local centre but it'll be 16 months after the last one by which time I'll be nearly 2 years from a lesson and will probably fail because of it. I just want to get on with my life - its infuriating.

Unless you have ideological objections, use the cancellation tracking service. I booked a test 6 moths out and signed up to the cancellation app which snapped me a slot three weeks away after a couple of days.

DVLA are gradually eliminating all of these apps. They hope to finally kill them all off on 31 March.

Which one did you use?

I'm on the apps and they don't work anymore - too slow. When I first signed-up 2 years ago I had to silence the notifications because they went constantly but now there's only a few a week at best and all unavailable by the time I've picked up my phone.

The whole system in grid locked.

My friend has a job she would like me to take on but being able to drive would make me so much more useful to her. The current situation is a total farce. If I wait until August the job won’t be there anymore.

I have booked the test at the centre 235 miles away in August as it was the closest one I could get from about 50 searches. But from April you can only move your test to a test centre near the one you have booked at already, so I’ll probably cancel my booking in the hope that one within maybe 100 miles appears. I mean ideally I would book one at the test centre 3 miles away next week and I’d be earning more money and paying more tax, but the government doesn’t seem to want to facilitate that. Madness.

I kept missing it too till I set it to automatically book the first morning slot at the test center closest to my house. Went to take a shower, came back to a notification that my slot was booked for 8am on the 2nd of January. Could have been the time of year, though.

It seems like the government just don't care and think its all 17 year olds who can cycle to college or whatever but fail to recognise that some of us are not young, have health issue or need to drive for kids, elderly parents and jobs etc.

If it gets much worse we might see more people driving without a licence and insurance out of sheer desperation.

I've got nearly a million quid sitting in a late relative's bank account that I can't do anything with because the Probate section at His Majesty's Courts and Tribunals Service has been sitting on a probate application for over a year.

I’ve heard probate is a disaster too. That’s a truly rubbish situation though, with your life on hold like that.

My dd has just given up on the driving test.
she’s getting around by public transport and me giving her lifts.

she did take a test in a centre a long way away a couple of years ago but it’s very hard to pass if you don’t know the area at all.

passports is bloody good though.

It was bad when I took my test 18 years ago (I even turned up to a test that they’d cancelled and not informed me…) but this sounds dreadful. It’s especially frustrating if you fail as you have to go through the whole thing again!

They need to make public transport outside of London better if they’re going to make it impossible for people to learn to drive.

The really funny thing is that my late relative's biggest creditor is.... HM Treasury.

My MP cannot see the irony in this shitshow.

This country is a complete joke. The driving test fiasco has been a problem for years, it could be fixed so easily but they still haven't done it.

For me it's the state of the roads. Shockingly bad, I live rurally and the roads do get damaged by bad winter weather, but they have never been as bad as they are now. Never.

Nobody wants to pay more tax to improve public services.

Along with the state of the roads, it’s almost as if the government is trying to stop us driving….

We pay plenty already, much is being wasted and going who knows where, that’s part of the problem.

Yes re driving tests. DS passed his theory test in Jan 25, couldn't get a practical test within 20 miles of Bristol (3 test centres) until 27 November 2025, by which time he'd started Uni and not had much practice. Failed that, and we've now got a test booked in Cardiff (1.5hrs drive away) in July 2026. Ideally we'll change it to one in Bristol, but they never seem to come up. DD did her test in 2023, and wasn't even as bad them (it wasn't great, but at least she could get a cancellation).

The issues with driving tests are threefold:

Government technology being susceptible to bots and their failure to address this (you have to wonder if they were getting backhanders, you really do. Fixing it is basic stuff! And;

You can earn more as an instructor than an examiner so no one wants to be an examiner, and;

High immigration means lots of people want to sit tests. It doesn’t help that we live in a town with lots of wealthy students that all seem to want to have cars these days.

In my experience, the worst offenders aren't the ones funded from taxation - they're the ones which charge fees and still don't deliver.

I love the ironic ‘do you want me to check for a test in your area within the next 3 days’ button. Hahahahaha! Has anyone EVER found a test date though this?

I just tried to login to change the date of DS' test (yes I know he should do it, but due to SEND, he's not brilliant at organising himself), first time I've ever tried, and have been blocked by the DVSA for fear that I'm a bot. If only I had the technical nous, DVSA...

Is signing up for a week-long crash course with pre-arranged test at the end a way of gaining quicker access? If so, in your position I’d be considering that.

I can’t see how these can exist though? Surely they have the same problems with examiners.

I don’t need lessons so this would be an incredibly expensive way to secure a test date (but I might get desperate enough soon…).

We're considering the intensive course, but not sure they'll be able to book tests from March. 4 July doesn't work for us at all - DS is hoping to be doing Camp America, but he could do the end of the summer, just no idea if a test date will become available.