If you’re learning to drive right now, you’ve probably already hit the same brick wall as everyone else: the never-ending wait to book a test.
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) says it’s finally doing something about it, adding 10,000 more driving test slots every month in an attempt to cut down those ridiculous wait times.
Right now, over half of test centres in the UK are quoting waits of more than six months. And things have only gotten worse – from February 2024 to February 2025, the number of centres with these crazy-long wait times almost doubled to 183. Nationally, the average wait time has stretched from three and a half months to five months.
To fight this backlog, the DVSA is hiring more examiners, training new ones faster, and encouraging current examiners to take on overtime. Transport secretary Heidi Alexander said she’s told the DVSA to “take further action immediately” to make thousands more test slots available every month.
So, Why Is It Still This Bad?
According to AA Driving School’s Lorna Lee, the backlog is basically leftover chaos from Covid lockdowns. “During all those lockdowns, driving tests are one of the things that were stop-start, because of various restrictions at different points,” she told Autocar.
“It’s understandable how [the backlog] built up, because you ended up with people who had been hoping to take their tests and then they couldn’t, or they couldn’t have lessons. There was pent-up demand as we all came out of lockdown and things got back to normal, but that pent-up demand has never been satisfied.”
The DVSA has tried to clamp down on some of the dodgy tactics being used – like people bulk-booking tests to resell for profit. It’s changed the rules so instructors can’t book tests for learners they don’t teach or book them without any intention of using them.
But Lee says this is all just treating the symptoms. The real issue? There just aren’t enough test slots available.
If you’ve ever tried to book a test online, you might’ve stumbled across third-party sites promising near-instant test dates... for £200–£300. These services use bots to scoop up newly released slots the moment they go live – way faster than any actual person could. They then resell them using driving instructors’ IDs, which locks out real learners from the official £62 DVSA test slots.
The DVSA says it’s been cracking down, closing 800 accounts involved in dodgy practices and updating its terms and conditions. But people in the industry say it’s still a big problem.
What’s the Fix?
One suggestion? A “standby” system – kind of like what airlines use. If someone doesn’t show up for their test, another learner from the waitlist can step in and take that slot.
