Ican that instructor sounds decidedly dodgy! When you are paying so much, I would expect them to offer you an alternative when they cancel. We are so lucky that a friend is teaching both ours to drive - just 8 hours with a professional instructor local to the test centre arranged for DS1 for topping and tailing, but even that is £240 (paying £30/hr in Bodmin). I think I read somewhere that the average is 40 hours of lessons, so an eye-watering £1,200 before you have paid for tests, theory apps, get-a-sensible-date apps.
@AnneOfCleavage I also noticed the Monday 29th July bit - made a note of it as my DSs are both planning to go to a festival 23rd to 25th July, so 19th leaves a small chance that it might go ahead but 26th would mean no festival. I know Boris must be intelligent as he went to Oxford and got a scholarship, although Classics is not as competitive as some subjects, but he does seem like a bumbling idiot. None of the panel answered the question about whether they see a need to give the second vaccination to students before they go back to university. Lots of universities are already offering vaccines (including the Welsh ones and St Andrews), but DS1 has come home and it is too far to go back just for a vaccine.