“Instead of booking a test in Bristol, I will be booking a hotel in Hereford”
Alex Seabrook is a local democracy reporter who covers Bristol City Council and South Gloucestershire Council. He grew up in Devon before moving to Cardiff for university, and he now lives in Bedminster
The DVSA is planning to make booking tests easier(Image: Alex Seabrook )
The hardest part of learning to drive this year has not been clutch control nor navigating through the minefield of city centre construction work. There are two test centres in Bristol and I simply cannot book a test in either one despite many desperate months of trying.
Learner drivers have struggled to book tests since the pandemic, first due to a backlog that built up and then due to that backlog getting exploited by scalpers. Some parts of the country are harder than others to book a test, like London or Bristol, with more rural parts less difficult.
As soon as I had passed my theory test in March I began trying to book a practical test, and I have not stopped since then. First you have to pass the most complicated Captcha test I’ve ever come across, to check you’re a human and not a bot. They make me doubt I am in fact human.
Then you have to wait about a minute while the website buffers, and finally you can choose which centre you would like to book a test in and when. Except the next stage, 99 per cent of the time, is a message saying there are sadly no available tests that meet your requirements.
I tried booking in centres near Bristol — Newport, Weston-super-Mare, Monmouth, Cardiff and Barry — and got the same message. Eventually, after about a month, I finally booked a test 50 miles away in Hereford.
The advice often given to learners is to book a test anywhere in the country, and then try to change your centre closer to home. So since April, I’ve been trying to do just that. There’s nothing wrong with Hereford, I’ve been there once for a weekend away to visit the superb Museum of Cider.
But I would much rather not have to travel so far for my test, as well as drive on unfamiliar roads. During most lessons now my instructor takes me to Kingswood, so that I can practise driving on the roads near the test centre there, which feels pointless, as I cannot change my test to Bristol.
Several times a week I struggle through the Captcha test, doubt my humanity, then try to change my test to Kingswood or Avonmouth, or even Newport or Weston, and get told no tests are available. I’ve spent £27 buying two apps that promise to help you change your test.
So far that has been a waste of money as they don’t seem to work. One app alerts you to a new test becoming available, but by the time you check your phone, log onto the website, pass the Captcha test, and wait for the buffer, somebody else has beaten you to the punch and booked it.
Another route, which I don’t want to go down but may end up having to, is to pay a scalper around £80 to find me a test in Bristol. That’s on top of the £62 I’ve already paid for my test in Hereford. But these scalpers, or test touts, are the very reason I cannot book a test myself.
Scalpers use bots to automatically book up loads of tests as soon as they are released, using the provisional driving licence details of learners without their knowledge. They then sell these on at an inflated price, both creating the scarcity and profiting from it too.
A freedom of information request I sent showed that on average one test doesn’t go ahead every day in both Kingswood and Avonmouth, likely because scalpers can’t resell all their tests. Over a year, 439 tests didn’t go ahead in Kingswood as candidates failed to turn up, and 344 in Avonmouth.
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Earlier this month the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency, the government body responsible for driving tests, released its annual report. This began with a chirpy statement from Loveday Ryder, the chief executive of the DVSA, about the achievements and dedication of the agency.
She said: “Despite providing 1.96 million car driving tests this year we are not on track to meet our business plan target of reducing car practical test waiting times to seven weeks or less by December 2025. We recognise the impact this has on learner drivers across the country and on driving instructors and their businesses.
“We continue to progress this work, continually reviewing the impact of action taken and looking for further opportunities to improve the situation. We recognise that there are no quick fixes and that we need to re-balance supply and demand for tests alongside tackling the systematic abuse of the test booking system.
“None of our achievements would be possible without the dedication and resilience of our people. I want to express my profound gratitude to every member of the DVSA team who has shown extraordinary commitment during this challenging period.”
The impact on me as a learner driver is that I cannot drive to see my grandparents who live in rural Devon without somebody supervising me. I cannot drive over to Cardiff to visit friends when the Severn Tunnel is shut (which happens often). I cannot drive to places in Bristol or South Gloucestershire that are hard to reach via public transport that I want to write about.
Earlier this month I bumped into friends outside the pub on a Friday night. One is also learning to drive and he had a test magically booked in Avonmouth that morning, but on the way there the red engine warning light in his car came on, meaning he would automatically fail the test.
He said he would try and book another one for January at the earliest, and had instead been drinking away his sorrows the whole day. It’s hard to overstate the demotivating, Kafkaesque effect on learner drivers from the DVSA failing to provide such a basic service as booking tests.
The DVSA just finished consulting the public on changing its system. These changes include letting only learners book tests, and not instructors, as well as removing the option to change the location of booked tests. These would help, but could also come much quicker. Until then, instead of booking a test in Bristol, I will be booking a hotel in Hereford — which is frankly absurd.