Large Goods Vehicle Drivers: Driving Tests

(asked on 7th July 2021) - View Source

Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to his comments of 7 July 2021 on HGV driver shortages, if he will (a) make a statement on the steps his Department has taken to increase the number of driving tests available, (b) publish figures on the number of HGV driving tests carried out each year since 2016 and (c) publish the geographical distribution of those additional HGV driving tests by region.


Answered by
Rachel Maclean Portrait
Rachel Maclean
This question was answered on 12th July 2021

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is doing it all it can to increase the number of vocational tests available and has put in place a number of measures to do this. These include offering overtime and annual leave buy back to examiners, asking all those qualified to conduct tests, but who do not do so as part of their current day job, to return to conducting tests, and conducting out of hours testing on public holidays and weekends. This has increased the overall number of vocational test slots made available to around 3,000 per week.

The DVSA will be launching a recruitment campaign to increase the number of HGV examiners. It will also continue its training programme to enable more examiners to conduct vocational tests.

The DVSA publish data for the number of large goods vehicle (LGV) practical driving tests and pass rates for each driving test centre on Gov.uk. DVSA continues to work with the driver training industry to understand demand, respond to geographical peaks.

Additional tests are added to each test centre as the resource becomes available and can vary on a daily basis. The number of tests conducted are published as Official Statistics.

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