Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what recent assessment he has made of the accuracy of the driving test waiting times published by the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency.

The official waiting time is based on more than 10% of test slots being available in an individual test centre. Whilst this approach is useful for planning it does not reflect the situation centre-by-centre across the country nor the availability of the one slot any candidate requires in order to take their test. If DVSA were to report on, for example, the average waiting time for the next available test slot, the waiting time would be shorter. The official measure currently shows a waiting time of more than 12 weeks; however, the next available test slot is, on average, only 7.6 weeks.