Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, how many additional driving examiners the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency plans to recruit in the next 12 months; and what assessment she has made of the adequacy of staffing levels at test centres serving West London.

In April 2025, the Government announced measures to increase practical car driving test capacity, including recruiting and training 450 driving examiners, expanding examiner training capacity, offering additional paid testing and deploying other suitably qualified Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) staff to conduct tests.

DVSA uses overtime and flexible working to provide additional appointments outside normal working hours, including in the evenings, at weekends and on public holidays, where there is demand and examiner availability. Its Additional Testing Allowance scheme, introduced in June 2025, had delivered more than 138,000 additional tests by the end of September 2026, including 30,873 in September 2026.

DVSA keeps recruitment requirements under review rather than setting a separate fixed recruitment target for each rolling 12-month period. The number of driving examiners is now at its highest level since November 2017. In the 12 months to September 2026, DVSA conducted more than 2.16 million car driving tests, the highest rolling 12-month total on record.

Demand continues to exceed available capacity at some test centres serving West London. Uxbridge currently has 11 full-time driving examiners, with nine at Yeading and eight at Southall. Three recruits are expected to join Yeading and one to join Southall, subject to successfully completing their training. DVSA is also recruiting for nearby centres, including Isleworth, Chertsey, High Wycombe and Slough, and can deploy examiners from other areas to centres with higher waiting times.

These measures, together with additional out-of-hours testing and changes to the booking service, are intended to increase the number of tests available, target capacity where demand is greatest and reduce waiting times.

DVSA has published detailed data on car driving test waiting times and availability by county, region and test centre, including for Uxbridge, to provide greater transparency. Further information is available on GOV.UK