Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps his Department is taking to tackle the shortage of practical driving tests in Erith and Thamesmead constituency.

To help increase practical driving test availability, the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) is recruiting more than 300 driving examiners across Great Britain, including in the Erith and Thamesmead area. The DVSA’s examiner recruitment campaigns continue to be successful but, like many employers, the DVSA is finding the job market extremely competitive. As it moves through each recruitment campaign, the DVSA will continually review and make changes and improvements to its recruitment and selection process, and training courses.

The DVSA is working hard to provide as many practical driving test appointments as it can, with several measures in place to do this.

These include:

• offering a national recovery allowance and annual leave buy back to driving 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 where capacity allows;
• conducting out of hours testing (such as on public holidays and weekends); and
• resuming the number of driving tests per day to seven for each full-time examiner.

The DVSA has launched a ‘Ready to Pass?’ campaign to improve learners’ understanding of how they can assess their own readiness for test. An open day was held on 16 October in Erith and Thamesmead for customers to meet driving examiners and find out more about being test ready.