Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what progress her Department has made in reaching its target to reduce average driving test waiting times to seven weeks by summer 2026.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency’s (DVSA) main priority is upholding road safety standards while it works hard to reduce car practical driving test waiting times.

On 23 April 2025, the Secretary of State for Transport announced that DVSA will take further actions to reduce driving test waiting times across the country. As part of this DVSA reintroduced the additional testing allowance (ATA) incentive scheme for driving examiners (DEs).

Since DVSA introduced the ATA initiative on 1 June 2025, it has conducted over 10,000 additional overtime tests each month in comparison with the number conducted in the equivalent overtime scheme in 2024.

Between June and September 2025, DVSA has conducted 41,931 more car practical driving tests in total, compared to the same period last year. In September 2025 alone, the Agency conducted 20,500 more tests compared to September 2024.

DVSA continues to run recruitment campaigns for new DEs. Since April 2025, DVSA has recruited 225 new entrant DEs (onboarded and started a training course) and, of those, 174 successfully completed training and were placed in a driving test centre.