Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to the Answer of 10 March 2026 to Question 118042, what assessment she has made of the potential impact of the Government Recruitment Service applicant tracking system on the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency's ability to access applicant referral source data.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) uses the Government Recruitment Service's applicant tracking system, but this does not provide information on how applicants learned about vacancies.

DVSA advertises all driving examiner vacancies on Civil Service Jobs(opens in a new tab) on GOV.UK. DVSA also uses posters in driving test centres and external online job sites to reach a wider pool of applicants.

For campaigns up to November 2025, DVSA used the data available from the Civil Service recruitment standard applicants survey. This shows which advertising routes generate candidates, however the information is limited and does not give 100% coverage.

In December 2025, DVSA introduced a DVSA specific survey. This is sent to everyone who is offered an interview. This is then followed by another survey sent to anyone who successfully moves onto training. The data will be crossed referenced, however DVSA currently only has data for one complete and one ongoing campaign.

For DVSA social media advertising, the current click through rate as of February 2026 was 1.4%. For DVSA direct communications that have been sent to subscribers of jobs at DVSA over the last 12 months, the average click through rate was 4%. It is not possible to say what number of these click throughs resulted in completed applications.