The new Labour government has inherited a country that feels “stuck”, and has done for many years. Economic growth has flatlined. Infrastructure projects can’t seem to get off the ground, public services don’t work, and costs of living keep going up and up and up.
While tackling this stagnation will be difficult, there are a number of relatively easy wins that Labour could tick off in their first year in office, generating a sense of progress and momentum that will help when it comes to the bigger issues. Here’s one such easy win: driving tests.
If you’re part of the lucky majority of adults who learned to drive prior to Covid, you might not know that since 2020 it’s been very difficult – at times almost impossible – for people to get their hands on a test. Users regularly log on to the official booking site only to be told there are “no tests found on any date”, not just at their local test centre but anywhere within a hundred miles. The problem is so severe that a secondary market has sprung up where customers pay a markup for tests that have been snapped up by automated software. Unsurprisingly, many learners report being scammed or having their details stolen by re-sellers.
This nightmare is the result of a backlog that built up during Covid, which the DVSA (the government agency which administers all driving tests) has not since had enough capacity to get through. By my calculation, this backlog currently sits at approximately one million tests, meaning that a million additional tests would have to be provided for normal service to resume. And in the meantime, hundreds of thousands of people are unable to drive, with all of the inconveniences and restrictions that entails.
So far, the DVSA’s approach to addressing the problem has not been effective. One of their most prominent policies has been their “Ready to Pass” campaign, encouraging learners not to arrive at their test insufficiently prepared (thus wasting a spot which could have gone to somebody likelier to pass). However, there is little to suggest that this is needed – despite the DVSA’s claim that “underprepared learners” are a contributing factor to their current problems, the pass rate since Covid remains roughly the same as it has always been (around 45 percent).
More recently, the DVSA made an additional tranche of 150,000 tests available over a six month period from October to March this year, by redirecting as many staff as possible to carry out driving tests instead of their usual work. This probably has taken the backlog down slightly – by my estimate, down from nearly 1.3 million to slightly over 1.1 million – but it was a temporary measure and has now finished. And even if the change had been permanent, an additional 150,000 tests every six months would still take more than three years to fix the problem: this is nowhere near fast enough, given the disruption that it is causing to people’s lives.
Ultimately, what is needed is much more radical change to drastically increase the capacity of the system on a temporary basis until the backlog is cleared.
First, the DVSA and the relevant government ministers should acknowledge the problem: that the current situation is unacceptable and that what has been done so far has not been enough to address it. A new approach is needed.
They should then act to mobilise surge capacity, perhaps by enlisting approved driving instructors (ADIs) with clean records and at least 10 years of experience to carry out tests after passing a short course – a similar approach to how large numbers of appropriately screened volunteers were quickly trained to administer Covid vaccines on an emergency basis. If nothing changes, the million-strong backlog will never go away. But if 10 percent of eligible ADIs were carrying out driving tests full time, they could clear it in under four months.
In the longer term, further changes can be made that would fix the system for good. Recruiting and retaining enough driving examiners has been a longstanding challenge, in part due to low salaries; the head of the DVSA has said herself that the booking system is “end of life” and needs revamping; and some of the facilities could also do with upgrades – my local test centre, for instance, has neither a car park nor a toilet.
These improvements could be funded by raising the cost of driving tests, which haven’t increased since 2009 and have therefore fallen substantially in real terms. The fact that tests change hands on the black market for hundreds of pounds shows that learners would be willing to pay more for a service that worked when they needed it – this money should stay inside the legitimate system rather than going to dodgy re-sellers. More money could be raised by introducing fast-track pricing: just as it is possible to pay a premium to get your passport the next day, there should be an option to book a driving test the same week for a higher price for those who need to.
Until it is cleared, the economic costs of the driving test backlog are surely pretty considerable. If the system is a million tests behind schedule, that’s hundreds of thousands of people who can’t get jobs where driving is required: jobs such as police officers, paramedics, firefighters, social workers, HGV drivers, and many more. One analysis found that almost a fifth of adverts on the job site Adzuna were for positions that required a driving licence – and this is likely an underestimate, as ads won’t necessarily mention if driving is the only practical way to commute.
If the government is concerned about the economy, and about rising rates of youth unemployment, the first thing they could do is ensure that those who need driving licences in order to work are able to get one. And if Labour manages to solve this, they will reap political benefits as well. The driving test backlog may be small relative to some of the other problems facing the country, but it is having an outsize impact on many people’s lives, young people’s especially. Fix it and they will thank you.
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