Since we went into lockdown, my bank has changed its interest rates, and they are certainly not for the better. It’s no big deal, and I fully understand why they’ve done it.
But one change on the financial front which was a pleasant surprise involved my Asda Cashback credit card. I’ve written about this before, but since I get all my groceries and fuel from Asda, getting 2% cashback on everything from there (0.2% anywhere else) has been a great way of reducing fuel costs. The only minor niggle has been you have to print off a voucher and can only use it in-store – and not to buy fuel directly.
Anyway, it turns out Asda’s relationship with Creation (the company who manages the card) is ending in July, and my account will automatically switch from Asda directly to Creation from that date. As I was reading the letter, I was waiting for the bad news about losing my cashback or having the rate reduced. But there wasn’t any. In fact, what will happen now is that I’ll get 2% cashback on purchases from anywhere, and the money will be credited to my balance every month! I pay the whole lot off monthly anyway, so there’s no interest.
I’ve currently got cashback to the value of about £50 in my Asda account (I’ve been getting weekly grocery deliveries online), and I’ve got until September to redeem that in-store.
Almost every one of these has ‘so can I start teaching again’ after it.
Loads of people have had COVID-19 without realising it
Official ONS statistics suggest 0.25% of the population has had COVID-19 as of the time this claim was made. That’s not ‘loads’. It’s actually a very small proportion – one four hundredth of the population, in fact.
Update: The government is now saying up to 20% ‘have had it’. I’m not sure how they know that, since only 3 million tests have been done, and most of those were on people in hospital, on the frontline, or with symptoms. Test 3 million people who are in the thick of it (or in hospital), and you will get far different results compared with testing 3 million people who have been in almost complete isolation for the last two months.
It’s just flu
Tell that to the 35,000 of the 0.25% (or 20%) who have died from it in just a little over three months.
I’ve had it, so I’m safe
And you can now leap tall buildings in a single bound. But assuming you have had it – a lot of ignorant people are convinced they have because they had a ‘bad cold and a cough’ around Christmas, and ignore the ONS figure of only 0.25% (or latest government claim of 20%) of the population likely to have – you can still spread it around. And no one is sure yet if you can get it again – which you probably will be able to, based on other coronaviruses.
I’ve had it, so I can’t pass it on
Yes you can. Perhaps not by coughing it out, but certainly by picking it up on your hands and transferring it by touching things.
The government said most cases are very mild
Yes. And 0.25% (or 20%) of the population has apparently had it, and 35,000 people have died as a result. Multiply 35,000 by 400 (or 5), and that’s potentially how many could die if the whole population got it based on what’s happened so far. It’s unlikely to be as high as that, but it’s still a Big Number.
Today was my day to make my claim. I had already checked to see if I was eligible for the grant, and had been given today as the date to make my claim.
The claim procedure was absolutely straightforward. Not a single hiccup along the way. The amount I was awarded was exactly what I’d calculated I would receive – around £3,500.
(Update: claim made Friday, payment made immediately after midnight Tuesday).
I note that quite a few instructors have been confused by the request for the ‘billing address’ of the account money is being paid into. Clearly, these people have never actually purchased anything on the internet before, since you’re asked for your billing address almost every time you make a purchase. Anyone still waiting to do their claim, the billing address is typically the address where the named person on the bank account you have specified lives (if you made it more complicated by living at a different address and using an account of someone else, you sort it out). In my case, it was straightforward – my billing address is always my home address – but it shouldn’t be that hard to work it out even if you’re one of those people who has a registered home address, a 2nd address, a business address, a holiday home, a caravan, a camper van, and a pony in a field somewhere. It isn’t the address of your bank, although from what I have heard, HMRC has turned off its stupid filter to allow for those who have decided – and even tried to argue – that it is.
Update: I am seeing lots of people making confusing statements about the way this payment is handled. To clarify.
You were given a date and time from which you could apply. Once you placed your claim – and assuming you entered the correct details in order to get paid – you were told it would take up to six days. That’s six working days, and most banks don’t include weekends as ‘working days’. Once your claim was made, the process was silent, and no emails relating to it’s progress through the system were sent out.
Once the payment was made to your nominated bank account, you may or may not have received a text, email, or other notification via your bank’s app. It would depend on the bank, the app, any settings you may or may not have set, or if you were still in the Dark Ages and insist on receiving paper statements through the post as if the internet didn’t exist. For example, my payment was made at one minute after midnight on Tuesday, and my banking app sent me a notification several hours later – as it does for any deposit into or payment from my account. This notification (or otherwise), in whatever form, is from your bank, and not HMRC.
Some banks are faster than others. It depends on whether they handle the ‘faster payments’ system, for one thing. Mine does, and deposits appear almost instantly. But it can take some time – sometimes a day or two – for other banks to process payments.
Amusingly, I did get an ‘update’ email from HMRC, addressed to me personally and containing my claim reference number, confirming I was eligible, and that my payment was ‘being processed’ and should be expected within ‘3 working days’. That arrived at 3am this morning – over a day after I’d been paid! It didn’t bother me in the slightest, nor do I feel the need to launch into an attack on anyone over it. However, it did add that you shouldn’t phone HMRC until the specified time period has elapsed – and I would point out that ‘six working days’ from a claim made last Friday potentially runs until next Monday.
Finally, bank account details and email addresses are very, very precise items. If someone asks for your email address, they have to have precisely your email address – not something ‘like’ what you seem to remember it might be, sort of. If you give the wrong one, you won’t get any emails. It’s that simple. And the same with a bank account and sort code numbers. If you entered them incorrectly when you made your claim, there’s a good chance the money has either gone to someone else (if the numbers matched) or the payment has failed. If you don’t get your payment after six working days, you’ll have to try and contact HMRC to sort it out. And don’t be surprised if you have to claim all over again.
Obviously – though perhaps not obvious to everyone – previous recent history suggests that this should be taken as at least the next review date in postponements, and that further postponements are a distinct possibility.
If you go to GOV.UK and search for ‘Self-Employment Income Support Scheme’ you will find the tool that checks your eligibility, and assigns you a time from which you can place your claim. I strongly advise that you do it this way, just in case someone sends you a scam email – never click on links from emails to access your bank or business accounts anywhere.
Make sure you have the necessary information before you start your eligibility check. You need your Government Gateway number, your UTR, and your NI Number to complete it.
The good news for me is that I am eligible, and I can make a claim from next week (though there is the possibility that the claim system might not be available until later in the week, but we shall see). The email also says that the calculated money will be paid within six working days.
Update: Well, it didn’t take long, did it? The system is about as simple and straightforward as it could be, yet it still seems to have thrown many into a state of utter confusion.
The original email makes it clear that you need your Gateway Access number, your UTR, and your NI Number. If you don’t have those to hand, you will not be able to complete the check. If you do your own self-assessment you will have them (frankly, even if you don’t do your own SA, you really ought to have this information on file).
When you check your eligibility, it just says whether you are, or whether you aren’t, eligible. It doesn’t tell you how much you’ll be getting or give you any money there and then. Honestly, it doesn’t. It then asks you to enter your contact details. Just your email address and phone number – no inside leg measurements, bank details, or anything – just your email address and contact phone number. This is so you can be sent the claim link on the date and time it gives you on the screen.
Claim dates and times are different for everyone. I guess they’ve done it like this to stop everyone crashing the system as they all apply at the same time first thing Monday when it starts up. In other words, the claims are staggered whether you like it or not. Moan about it all you want – you’d certainly be moaning if the system crashed due to overload – but at least they are trying to avoid problems.
Let me stress again. You are not making a claim at this moment in time. You are just checking your eligibility, and providing two pieces of contact information so they can send you the claim link at your date and time next week.
Once you have done that, the screen message clearly indicates that there’s nothing more to do at this stage. The clue is in the absence of any further questions or requests for (sigh) bank details. They will want your bank information next week.
This system makes perfect sense to me. However, some people also appear put out by the fact that they aren’t just getting a wheelbarrow full of cash dumped on their doorstep, and they’ve actually got to do something to get it. Something so horrendously illogical as… filling in a claim form!
Reading social media, etc., and it amazes me the number of instructors who are confused over what they need to do – even though they apparently do their own self assessments each year!
If you do your own SA, you will have access to the Government Gateway. When you log in, the security system sends you a text message with a short-lived access code, which you then have to type in before getting to your account. It stands to reason you should not be sending screenshots of this access code to social media or any other source, but I can see people doing precisely that. The first time you log into the Gateway, it asks you to set this up.
The access code expires after 15 minutes, after which time you’ll need to get a new one. However, you can ask the system to ‘remember for 7 days’ if you plan on logging in several times in the immediate future. This is even more reason not to go posting screenshots anywhere just because ‘you can’. It is security information, roughly equivalent to a password, and making it known to all and sundry removes one level of security from your most private financial information. If anyone gains access to that, they could pretend to be you virtually anywhere in the world.
I also see people triggering the whole issue all over again every single time they get a text message, with a deluge of inconsistent, repetitive replies every single time. HMRC will not send out any messages with links in them. You should always go to GOV.UK and access your account from there, or from within links within GOV.UK.
If you’ve gone through everything once and been given a time and date for your claim, you do not need to do it again. You do not need to do it two more times. Or three more times. Once you’ve done it the first time, nothing you can do will make next week come any quicker. Just wait.
Not every test message you receive is a scam. If you get one from HMRC and it doesn’t contain any links or mention sums of money, it is almost certainly legitimate. Log into the Gateway and you can check – if you don’t owe anything when you look at your account, then you don’t owe anything, period. So any text message saying otherwise can be ignored.
This is the same principle you should follow for any other text message telling you your ‘bill is overdue and you’ll get cut off if you don’t pay immediately’. I get them allegedly from EE and Virgin Media on a regular basis. The giveaway is usually the email address they come from, but all I do is log into my EE or Virgin accounts and check (helped by the fact that I pay by direct debit and I know I have funds to cover my payments). What I don’t do is click the link and then start posting all over social media to get a 50:50 opinion on whether it’s a scam or not. I note that social media replies are frequently 50:50 on being right if it is a scam, and 50:50 on being right if it isn’t. The net result is a complicated answer that is lucky if it’s even close to being right.
DO NOT click links in emails to access your bank, HMRC, or other accounts where your bank details are stored. If you do, contact your bank immediately and tell them what you’ve done.
Even if you realise it is a scam, don’t try and be a smart arse by clicking the link to try and outfox the scammers. You might be saying ‘yes’ to having software installed on your PC or phone. At the very least, you are saying ‘I am here’, and thus registering yourself as a target.
It’s no secret, but I am not a fan of this government in normal times. None of that will have changed.
However, they have announced a help package for self-employed people that will apply to the majority of driving instructors. From what I understand at the moment, your average income for the last three years will be determined (though I believe you will still be eligible if you submitted a return for last year), and you will be paid 80% of that. It’s all explained here. You will still be liable for tax on it next year because it is still self-employed income, which is perfectly understandable. But this is where the fun begins.
It appears that many instructors still can’t work out the difference between turnover and profit/income, and are of a mind to believe that the government is going to (or should be) be paying them for overheads which they no longer have to cover right now, such as fuel and franchise/car ownership costs. Others, for unfathomable reasons, seem to expect to be paid their entire (and sometimes imaginary) income without even having to get up. This is where previous, erm, ‘creativity’ when filing your tax return comes home to roost, and if you’ve been earning close to £30k but only declaring £20k of it, then it is the latter figure you’ll be assessed on.
For the billionth time, your turnover is not called gross profit – or any other term with ‘profit’ in it. It is your turnover. HMRC will not be calculating this grant based on your turnover, and that is true no matter what stupid name you give it when you’re doing your tax return. It is how much money passes through your hands as a result of your business. In any normal year, you have to subtract business overheads from your turnover. What’s left is your trading or taxable profit. This is sometimes referred to as gross profit, and it is what you pay tax on. It is the trading/taxable profit HMRC will be using to calculate how much you’ll get from this grant – not any other kind of ‘profit’, and especially not one you made up so you could use the word ‘net’ a lot on your Excel spreadsheet. And one final thing, as long as your trading profit makes up more than half of your total income then you will still get the grant – that condition is there for people who live off investments. In other words, if you have a private pension income and also work as an instructor, then as long as your Self Assessment trading profit is more than you get from your pension (which is PAYE and HMRC knows about it already), you are still eligible.
I have to admit that GOV.UK has complicated the issue by putting ‘turnover’ in brackets next to ‘total trading income’ (aka trading profit) on it’s ‘information page’ – which doesn’t actually explain things very clearly at all. The media summaries which say you will get “80% of your taxable profits from self-employment, averaged over the last three years” is the key.
If you go on to the HMRC website and look at your account, you can see your tax statements for the last four years. Last year – the one I’ve most recently sent in as my self-assessment – my total income was around £25,000. Part of that for me is now from a private pension which I only started receiving part way through that tax year, but which means I’ve eased off the gas somewhat when it comes to worrying about cancellations and maintaining a full diary these days. The majority of it was from self-employment, though. Depending on how they do this, I estimate that they will be paying me around £1,000 per month.
That’s £1,000 a month (£230 a week) that I otherwise wouldn’t have had, which – when the payment kicks in – will be backdated to the start of March, as I understand it. As the saying goes, that is somewhat better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick.
These are extraordinary times, and we are experiencing something no one has ever experienced before – and I include the Spanish Flu epidemic in 1918 in that (if anyone is alive who can remember it). The government paying anything – let alone 80% of income – to millions of people is unprecedented. Unprecedented with knobs on. Unprecedented to the power of ∞. And still people aren’t happy.
The vast majority of instructors have had franchises, car leases, car loans, and almost all other debts put on hold. Gas and electric companies are deferring payments. Even major lenders for mortgages are trying to help. OK, some are still stalling on it, but they’re going to have to get real and offer people something. On that alone, though, getting 80% of your normal annual income could easily leave you slightly better off in the short term until you can start earning again and the bills come back online.
In some cases, the help is automatic and is being applied as a matter of course. In others, you simply have to get off your arse and ask for it. Although they appear to snowed under, Universal Credit is open to almost everyone – especially those who have only been instructing for a short time.
I am fortunate now, and have my private pension to help me through this. That pension, with the lump sum that went with it, was originally purposed for use in retirement when I eventually get there, and it is a long way from keeping me in the manner to which I have become accustomed by itself (though it will be much closer once there is a state pension on top of it and I have no business overheads to worry about). But to have it partially protected in this way now is some comfort.
Of course, this will make many people angry – anger comes immediately after jealousy for many people. But I would point out that I have been through something very similar financially in the past. When I lost my job all those years ago, I had huge debts and zero income initially (the pension was way off). While I trained to be an ADI I was on almost the minimum wage for a part of the time, and had to negotiate with my creditors to allow reduced payments throughout that time – and that was back when they had no reason at all to want to play ball. But they did (though CapitalOne tried hard not to the entire time, with their incessant, sometimes daily, phone calls). I didn’t want to declare bankruptcy, or use it’s teenage cousin (the IVA), because of how it might affect me being an instructor and self-employed later on. My credit rating then was literally zero.
It was a struggle. But I got through it – forced my way through it, in fact – and eventually paid off all my debts. My credit rating now couldn’t be higher.
If I can do it, you can do it. You can. The only way out of situations like that – and like this one now – is to be active and proactive. To meet problems head-on and deal with them. And to accept that some degree of hardship is inevitable. Don’t get angry or start throwing hissy-fits at anyone, and be very careful if you cut off payments without clearing it with them first (don’t listen to smart arses on social media telling you to do it), because that would mean you’re defaulting on your agreement, and I can promise you that will come back to haunt you in future if you get one against your name. Yes, you might be on hold for a long time on the phone – other people are affected, too – and yes, you might get cut off. But you’re not going to get chucked out of your home anytime soon. There is a solution to every problem. You just have to find it.
I realise that the support package will not apply to those who have only been trading for a short time, and I am really sorry for you about that (obviously, the title of this article isn’t directed at you). Similarly, you’re not eligible if your main income is from somewhere else, and you only give lessons to make a bit of pocket money. Universal Credit is there if you need it, so push for it. And if it really seems like there is no way forward – or if you simply cannot do it by yourself – contact a credit management company to help you.
Once all this is over, people are going to want driving lessons again. Many will be in a position where they need to drive to be able to find work. While all this current stuff is happening, people will still be turning 17, and they will be waiting for the time when they can start taking lessons. In my case, all those people who I had to terminate lessons with last week will still be waiting (unless they were all so mercenary, they managed to find some asshole who has been teaching during the pandemic).
We can all get through it.
Edit July 2023: Just picked up a run of hits on this. I think I need to be Prime Minister, or something. Everything I predicted is precisely what actually happened – and I said it right at the start of the pandemic. I’m turning work away because of people needing to drive, and most of us got through the pandemic, didn’t we?
Well, Donald Trump appears desperate to outdo himself with everything he says and does. You will no doubt have heard his latest medical endorsement of the possible use of bleach or detergent – injected or consumed – to get rid of COVID-19. He even iced the cake by referring to UV light – used internally as well as externally – as a possible ‘cure’ for the virus!
Whatever he meant – whatever he was thinking – it is what other people will think that matters. Stupid people, in particular.
There has already been a case of someone in Arizona dying because he took Trump’s previous endorsement of Chloroquine literally and dosed himself up on the stuff used to clean aquariums. His wife was apparently in a critical condition after doing the same. In the immediate aftermath of Trump’s latest rant, Reckitt Benckiser – the manufacturers of Lysol and Dettol – have had to issue warnings not to ingest or inject their products.
The problem is that stupid people don’t know that they’re stupid. In many cases, they actually think they’re smart. I suppose ‘stupid’ is perhaps a bit strong, but the alternative – that they are just average people – is potentially even more worrying, since it means that there’s a lot more of them around.
Sticking with the bleach thing for a moment, household products are not manufactured under conditions that make them anywhere near suitable for internal use. They are even further away from being suitable for intravenous use. An example would be calcium supplement tablets. The raw material in those is often calcium carbonate – but the quality of that material is nothing like the calcium carbonate that would be used in cement, which is another of its applications. The stuff in the tablets is purified in a lab to make it suitable for ingestion. The stuff used in cement pretty much comes straight out of a limestone quarry.
Household cleaners share a similar gulf in how ‘clean’ they are, with the additional problem being that you don’t use bleach – particularly chlorine-based bleaches – internally for anything. They are corrosive and toxic. Even gentler bleaches like the peroxides are used highly diluted and for external purposes (tooth whitening, for example).
But the problem seems to be that stupidity – or averageness – isn’t confined to Trump, the Americans, or any other nation, although there does seem to be a link between education and being prepared to do things that it might have been best not to.
Let’s summarise the problem we have. There’s a virus. It spreads easily. It kills a lot more people than seasonal flu does, even though it isn’t flu. There is no vaccine at the moment. No one alive can remember anything like what we have right now. In order to protect as many people as possible, the government ordered the lockdown we are all currently dealing with. No one person’s life is any more valuable than anyone else’s – no matter what their health or age.
Read that last paragraph carefully. It contains no opinion – just facts.
Now ask yourself this. What has changed in any of that during the last month? Absolutely nothing has.
In my own industry, I continue to see people who are putting money and themselves above all else. They desperately want to return to work, and will try any argument to convince themselves they should be allowed to. There are still people saying that it’s ‘no worse than flu’. There are still people whose argument is ‘I need money, so we should be allowed back to work’. There are instructors desperately searching for key workers to teach, even though they have children and are in daily contact with vulnerable people. There are instructors desperate to return to work by the time ‘the kids go back to school’ (or conversely, want the lockdown lifted just to suit whatever the schools decide to do so that they can work without having to worry about childminding). There are older people arguing ‘I don’t want to be imprisoned for the rest of my life’, as if that is a reason for the lockdown to be lifted. There are people still desperately trying to believe that wearing a mask and gloves means you’ll be safe sitting in a car with six or more different pupils every day, and who would gladly go back to normal if that’s all they had to do. Some would work tomorrow – with no protection whatsoever – if they were ‘allowed to’. Others repeatedly quote ‘Sweden’, as if that somehow means we ought to pretend nothing has happened.
I could go on, and on, and on with more examples.
These are the ‘average’ members of society I was referring to. They simply do not have a clue.
This is an old article from right at the start of the Covid Pandemic.
People keep asking (or criticising) DVSA over concerns about their badges. The ADI’s ‘badge’ – often called the ‘green badge’ – is their licence to teach. It costs £300, which has to be paid every 4 years in order to remain on the Register. I had one such query this morning.
Understandably – up to a point, and usually until it becomes offensive, which with some ADIs it does after about two seconds – during the COVID-19 Pandemic people are asking if they will get an extension to their ADI registration.
The situation we are in is extraordinary. Nothing like it has ever happened before. And it is a Brand New Situation. It’s only been in progress for barely more than two months, and in that time extraordinary actions have been taken – such as the plan to pay people 80% of their income out of government coffers. I would also point out that the number of people who have died (and who are likely to die) is also rather extraordinary, but this seems to keep falling on deaf ears for many.
Right now, there is no clear light at the end of the tunnel, and no one can be certain about when this will all be over and we can return to work.
ADI registration is, I believe, a situation that is governed in Law. It isn’t something DVSA can just change whenever it feels like it, because it doesn’t have that power – only the Law does. Therefore, in order to extend registrations, the Law would need to be amended. Right now, there are far more important things we need to worry about.
Phoning up DVSA is not going to get you anywhere, except angry (if you’re one of the kind who refuses to understand the situation, and blames DVSA for everything). All they can possibly say is what I have said above: that registration lasts for a fixed four years and cannot be extended.
However, the longer this situation continues, the more of an issue it is likely to become. DVSA itself will almost certainly be thinking the same thing, even now. And from what I can see, they are already being lobbied by professional groups of angry people who blame DVSA for everything to look at extensions. If you are really concerned, maybe you could join one of these groups and add your voice.
So just bear that in mind. My own opinion is that if this does go beyond three months, an emergency amendment to the Law to extend ADI licences at some point is likely. Or a partial refund, maybe. Or a discount on the next renewal. I’m only guessing, and have no inside information. The only thing I am certain of is that whatever they do, someone somewhere will still be unhappy about it.
I’m just being realistic instead of angry.
Edit (2022): I’d forgotten all about this. I renewed my badge this year according to the same 4-year time scale based on my last, and I didn’t give it a second thought. I was wrong about what might happen back in 2020. The main thing is, Covid has moved to a back burner, I am teaching as much as I want to, and my badge is renewed for another four years. Life goes on.
But what about learners and their theory tests?
The same still applies. It’s the Law. Right now, DVSA can only tell you what the Law is, and they have no power to decide differently. And they don’t, no matter how angry you are.
Edit (2022): As we know, the government refused to allow extensions to theory tests. Rightly so, in my opinion.
I keep seeing people saying we’ll be back working as instructors by the end of May, or in June or July. I do not see how we possibly can be.
COVID-19 is still there. You can still catch it. You can still spread it. People can still die from it. And there’s still no vaccine to prevent it or ‘cure’ it.
None of that is likely to change by June.
Something new has got to come up before we could realistically start working again. If it turns out most of us have had it, and didn’t realise, but now have immunity, then that would be a game changer. But there’s no valid reason to pin our hopes on that right now.
Maybe a vaccine will be found much, much quicker than we think. But there’s no valid reason to pin our hopes on that, either.
Maybe COVID-19 will do as Donald Trump suggested barely a month ago, and just ‘go away’. And there’s no valid reason to expect that.
The simple fact is that if people start teaching again in June, the situation will be approximately the same (worse, actually, since there are more background infections) as it was a few days before the lockdown – an active virus, ready to jump between anyone who has it and anyone who doesn’t, and with the same potential outcome for anyone who develops symptoms that we have right now. If relaxing the restrictions too soon results in just one person being infected who otherwise wouldn’t be, it could easily result in dozens of others subsequently dying once they pass it on – and I’m thinking of examiners and test candidates.
Simply because DVSA is moving tests back to June and July is a meaningless detail when it comes to ‘getting back to normal’. It has no bearing on how the pandemic develops in any way whatsoever. The virus isn’t going to stop infecting and killing people just because a few thousand driving tests were cancelled in March and moved to July. There’s every possibility that when we get to July, they’ll be pushed back to September or October. Or even further.
Far too many people don’t appreciate how serious the problem is, and can only see it from the financial angle. And while that is most definitely understandable, it is not a sound reason to ‘get back to normal’ regardless.
But DVSA said tests were only cancelled for three months
Yes. And the day before that they were only cancelled for two days. And the day before that they weren’t cancelled at all.
Look, this is a developing situation – and an extremely serious one at that. When DVSA said ‘three months’, at that time it was a conveniently distant time point to push back to. Even two weeks in from the initial announcement, it should be absolutely clear to most people that three months is optimistic at best. Virus cases are still increasing, as are virus deaths.
It doesn’t matter how many people tell you they’ve had a cancelled test ‘rearranged to June’. Whether or not that test goes ahead in June is not governed by the fact it is currently on that date. It is governed by the pandemic and how it develops.
So why have I got a test date in June (or July)?
Absolutely no one knows what is going to happen next, and that includes DVSA. All they have done is move tests back according to government timelines – and that’s the timelines as they stood three weeks ago! You can see for yourself (or, I would certainly hope you can) how bad the situation with COVID-19 has become. Can you honestly see things changing in such a way that by June we’ll all be going about business as though nothing happened?
Open your eyes and look at what’s happening. Something totally unlooked for is going to have to happen for us to be ‘back to normal’ in June or July.
I need to get back to work
We all do. But the virus isn’t interested in that. It kills people. And that is far more important than the need to work.
Regarding the three-month driving test suspension, be aware that the rearranged dates in June cannot be changed right now.
One of my pupils texted me tonight and said the time on the new date she’s been given isn’t convenient, but she couldn’t change it. I asked her for the booking reference so I could have a look and even on the first page the message above makes it clear you cannot do anything right now. If you do try to proceed further, you get this message.
It’s fairly clear. The entire DVSA is effectively closed as far as test bookings etc. go.
Since we went into lockdown, my bank has changed its interest rates, and they are certainly not for the better. It’s no big deal, and I fully understand why they’ve done it.
Today was my day to make my claim. I had already checked to see if I was eligible for the grant, and had been given today as the date to make my claim.
I had an email from HMRC this morning, which 
Originally published 27 March 2020.
Well, Donald Trump appears desperate to outdo himself with everything he says and does. You will no doubt have heard 
I keep seeing people saying we’ll be back working as instructors by the end of May, or in June or July. I do not see how we possibly can be.
Regarding the three-month driving test suspension, be aware that the rearranged dates in June cannot be changed right now.
It’s fairly clear. The entire DVSA is effectively closed as far as test bookings etc. go.