Learners face 5-month driving test wait times as backlog targets are missed

Learner drivers are facing driving test waits of up to 24 weeks for at least the next two years. An investigation by the UK’s public spending watchdog has uncovered what it describes as “underlying issues at DVSA”, meaning it won’t hit its target of reducing the practical driving test backlog by the end of 2025.

The inquiry, commissioned by the Government and carried out by the National Audit Office (NAO), found that as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic, 1.1 million fewer tests were carried out. While 400,000 of these are now booked in the DVSA’s system, as many as 360,000 are still to be so because the current system is struggling to overcome the backlog.

Much of the reason for this, according to the NAO, comes down to operational shortcomings as the DVSA. Despite widespread calls to recruit more staff to conduct tests in a bid to cope with the backlog, there are only 83 more full-time examiners now than there were in 2021. This is despite an increase in demand and the target of 400 new examiners.

“[The DVSA’s] system for booking tests is not working well for learner drivers,” the NAO’s concluding remarks read. “It has not been able to recruit and retain enough examiners to increase capacity, and its operational forecasting did not identify the underlying causes and sustained nature of the increases in demand, other than that relating to the pandemic backlog.”

This means that despite intervention from the Government in order to free up more bookings, learner drivers now face an average 22-week wait for a practical test. Almost three quarters (70 per cent) of all test centres report that they’re currently at the maximum 24-week wait time after which they stop taking new bookings.

In fact, the NAO estimates the queue for a driving test won’t be back down to a seven-week wait until November 2027, despite its goal to achieve this by the end of 2025.

Attempts to jump the queue

This has led to roughly a third (31 per cent) of learner drivers booking their test via a third party in order to try and skip the waiting list – or simply get a slot in the first place – with some paying fees of up to £500 to do so. For context, the DVSA’s standard weekday test fee is just £62.

There may be some light at the end of the tunnel; with the DVSA having announced a new booking system in November 2025 that will only allow learner drivers to book tests, blocking external parties from doing so. The NAO says the DVSA “now ha[s] a good opportunity to restore acceptable levels of service”.

The NAO explained how facilitating a scale-up in the DVSA’s workforce would help it cope with increased demand. As part of recent changes, examiners will receive a £5,000 ‘retention payment’ to get them to stay in the job as many tend to leave quicker than the DVSA can hire new staff.

A spokesperson for the Department for Transport said: “We inherited a frustrating system with learner drivers left in limbo waiting for tests, a system ripe for rogue individuals to exploit.”

“That’s why we’re taking decisive action to address the backlog and seeing improvement – including deploying military driving examiners, and from spring 2026, limiting test moves and swaps, and only allowing learner drivers to book tests.”

“The DVSA has already carried out 74,847 extra tests between June and November 2025 compared to 2024, and these new measures will deliver thousands more extra tests over the next year.”

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