The driving test crisis has got even worse

New data shows DFT haven't got a grip, and young people are suffering

In October last year, I asked a set of Parliamentary Questions to understand how bad the waiting lists were for driving tests around the country. A couple of weeks ago, I tabled further PQs asking for updated figures.

Amazingly, the results show that wait times have become significantly worse. We’ve gone from one third to two thirds of all driving test centres being fully booked out.

Compared with the last data from September 2024, waiting times have increased in every region. In the Midlands and South West England the average wait has risen to by three and a half weeks. In Scotland and the North East, the average wait time is now five and a half weeks longer.

Appointments are released on a rolling 24-week basis. If there are no tests available at a centre, you just can’t book anytime in the next six months. So the chart below is telling you that centres are now more or less fully booked out in all regions:

Zooming in on the last 13 months, waiting times in London and the South East, and in the Midlands and the South West, have remained extremely high, even closer to the upper limit of 24 weeks. Meanwhile, in Scotland and North East England, and Wales and North East England, average wait times have risen more sharply, nearing that same level.

What is likely happening here is the build-up of pressure in the South is spilling over into the North, Wales and Scotland. I have personally heard stories of young people forced to travel great distances to secure a test slot, as well as of tests being booked anywhere they can be found simply so they can later be exchanged for cancelled slots closer to home (I know someone in London who recently booked in the far north of Scotland for that reason)

In September last year, 76 out of 241 driving test centres were fully booked (31.5%). In October last year it was 112 out of 325 centres (34%). By October 2025, that number had ballooned to 214 out of 319 centres (67%).

This means that we have gone from one third to more than two thirds of all test centres that are fully booked out.

From Lerwick to Penzance, the whole country is more or less booked up now:

With many test centres in the South already pinned at the 24 weeks maximum (and so unable to worsen further), the most significant increases are now occurring in rural areas, where overspill demand is pushing up waiting times.

In response, the DFT have announced various classic Whitehall wheezes. A tiny number of military driving examiners have been asked to work on civilian tests. The department seems very focussed on tackling the symptoms of the problem: The DFT say they are “Allowing only learner drivers to book their own tests, not instructors on their behalf… Restricting driving test bookings to two changes before they must be cancelled and rebooked”. These are the classic displacement activities Whitehall loves to engage in when not facing up to an underlying problem.

Whatever the government are doing, it isn’t working. The DFT have put out a jaunty video saying they are “cutting driving test wait times”, but in reality waits are increasing.

It will soon be six years since the Covid pandemic. Yet young people can’t get on with their lives or get jobs because the DFT can’t get its act together to provide a basic state function. What a shambles.