Plans to cut the wait for a driving test to seven weeks by the end of the year will not be achieved until November 2027, an audit report has found.
Only a net 83 more driving test examiners have been hired despite 19 recruitment campaigns since 2021, with the average wait for a practical test now at 22 weeks across Great Britain, according to the National Audit Office (NAO).
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA), which sets tests and issues licences, estimates that about 680,000 people who have passed their driving theory test may not yet have managed to book their practical test.
About 70% of driving test centres have every slot fully booked for the maximum 24 available weeks ahead.
The government announced plans last month to ban bots and third parties from booking tests, to help tackle the backlog and crack down on the hidden market where touts resell test slots at inflated prices – up to eight times the £62 fee, the NAO said.
The NAO found that while the DVSA had launched a plan last year to slash the wait for tests to seven weeks by the end of 2025, it did not now expect to achieve it for two more years.
It said that while a large backlog of driving tests, about 1.1m, had built up during the pandemic, the DVSA had been slow to react to other factors, such as a rise in people taking theory tests, and bots booking up available slots. The agency still struggled to recognise the level of demand, it found.
The report said many examiners were quitting amid concerns over safety and low rates of pay, meaning that the recruitment target of 400 net additional examiners had ended up at just 83.
The NAO noted that the DVSA was also making a loss of £24 on every test, a deficit of £44m over the year, because the fee charged had not changed since 2009.
Gareth Davies, the head of the NAO, said: “The current system for providing driving tests in England, Scotland and Wales is not working satisfactorily, with long waiting times and exploitation of learner drivers by resellers of test slots.
“Our report recommends that the DVSA and the Department for Transport take decisive action to restore a fit-for-purpose driving test service.”
The DfT has pledged to make more tests available, and also announced last month it would call in military driving examiners to carry out tests.
A DfT spokesperson 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 this year compared to 2024, and these new measures will deliver thousands more extra tests over the next year.”
