Asked by: Paul Howell (Conservative - Sedgefield)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many National Register of Taxi and Private Hire Licence Revocations and Refusals searches were submitted by (a) Newcastle City Council, (b) Sunderland City Council, (c) Hartlepool Borough Council, (d) Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council, (e) Darlington Borough Council and (f) Durham County Council in the last year for which data is available.
Answered by Richard Holden - Minister without Portfolio (Cabinet Office)
Use of the National Register for Refusals and Revocations (NR3) is recommended in the Department’s Statutory Taxi and Private Hire Vehicle Standards which was published in 2020. The Department is monitoring usage of the NR3 and communicates with local authorities on this matter regularly.
Searches conducted by the local authorities listed over the last year:
Licensing Authority | Drivers Licensed (31 March 2022) | NR3 Searches (March 2022 – Feb 2023) |
Darlington Borough Council | 365 | 342 |
Durham County Council | 1,405 | 789 |
Hartlepool Borough Council | 352 | 4 |
Newcastle City Council | 4,576 | 0 |
Stockton-on-Tees Borough Council | 744 | 725 |
Sunderland City Council | 737 | 481 |
Asked by: Paul Howell (Conservative - Sedgefield)
Question to the Department for Transport:
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department have taken to help ensure a sufficient level of fully qualified HGV drivers to carry out the additional 50,000 HGV driving tests being made available each year.
Answered by Trudy Harrison
The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) has increased the number of vocational driving tests available per week to 3,000. This is a 50% increase from before the pandemic, achieved through the use of overtime and moving additional staff into testing.
DVSA has recruited 300 new car examiners to ease demand on vocational examiners, who conduct HGV driving tests, and is also recruiting 40 more vocational examiners. In addition, the delegation of the reversing manoeuvres in the HGV driving test to approved trainers, announced on 10 September 2021, will allow vocational examiners to complete more driving tests per day.
The forthcoming regulatory change to remove the requirement to take a test to tow a trailer with a car, also announced on 10 September, will result in around an additional 30,000 vocational tests a year being made available, as most of the examiners who conducted car and trailer tests are also qualified to conduct HGV and HGV and trailer tests. A further 20,000 vocational tests will be made available through removing the requirement to take a rigid lorry (Cat C) test before an articulated vehicle (Cat C+E) test.