NOTE: This is an old article and much of what is said is no longer relevant. It was at the time… but the River of Time flows ever on…
Apologies for this crappy link. The Nottingham Post website is an unfortunate collection of annoying and intrusive adverts with poorly written and alarmist news stories secreted amongst them. However, one of my pupils told me that Colwick Test Centre was closing when she arrived for her lesson the other day, but after further investigation it appears that the story she’d read concerned Watnall test centre, and not Colwick. And it isn’t anywhere near as clear-cut as she’d been led to believe.
The title of the Post’s piece is misleading, since the “closure” being referred to is neither confirmed, nor is it connected with the totally separate matter of test waiting times which the Post covered in a similarly unbalanced way a week or two previously, and so brought into this story unnecessarily. The simple truth of the matter is that Watnall testing station is – and has always been – primarily for HGV and public services drivers. Over the years, car tests have been carried out there “in secret” (it didn’t show up as an option when you booked, but you could ask if you booked by phone), temporarily (when Chalfont Drive first closed down), or officially up until the present time (after Clarendon Street closed down). With much HGV testing going private these days, DVSA is considering the future viability of the Watnall site – which is huge (the yellow area in the photo), and must cost a fortune to maintain. Car testing is a very small part of it (the red areas – and I might be wrong about the size and precise location of the parking bit, as I haven’t used Watnall myself during its most recent incarnation as a car testing centre).
My first reaction when I read the article, and extracted the simple facts from the complex cipher used by the Post’s amateur writers, was “if they close it, where will they move car tests to this time?” However, many other ADIs’ initial reaction is along the lines of “we must start a petition… fight them in the air, in the sea, and on the beaches… because test waiting times are already 17 weeks… we can’t afford to lose a test centre while it is like that… the only option if Watnall closes is Lincoln… Purple monkey dishwasher.” The Post quotes some of these comedians.
The simple truth is this: Watnall as a car test centre IS NOT closing. The future of the site is under review, but DVSA has made it clear that if the site closes, then provision will be made for car driving tests to be conducted from an alternative location. The alternative location WILL NOT be 50 miles away in Lincoln, as some of those ADIs are suggesting! Tests around Watnall may move, but they won’t stop. Christ! Even Derby is closer than Lincoln. And Sutton-in-Ashfield, Melton Mowbray, Loughborough, Leicester, and Burton on Trent. Not to mention the other THREE Nottingham test centres. I mean, what kind of idiot do you have to be to start rattling on about Lincoln?
About six years ago, Nottingham had three test centres (Chalfont Drive, West Bridgford, and Gedling), with Watnall always hanging around as a do-they-don’t-they venue. West Bridgford and Gedling were tiny places with little or no parking, and the Labour government’s push to open multi-purpose test centres (MPTCs) saw these closed down and amalgamated into Colwick MPTC (great idea, by the way). All hell broke loose at the time, with ADIs boycotting Colwick and migrating their pupils to Chalfont Drive whether they wanted to go there or not. Many instructors were terrified of having to teach bay parking for the first time in Nottingham (that’s a fact, by the way).
Later, the lease ran out on Chalfont Drive, and DVSA waited until then before even starting to look for alternative venues. Tests were subsequently and variously conducted from DVLA Offices (now closed), Watnall, and finally Clarendon Street. Clarendon was part of a Coalition drive to move tests out of test centres and “into the community” (stupid idea), and Clifton also opened for tests for this reason at the same time. Clifton and Clarendon were experimental and were originally only going to be operated for a limited period. Eventually, Beeston officially replaced Chalfont as the main test centre on the west side of Nottingham, and tests operating out of DVLA Offices and Watnall moved over there.
Finally, and most recently, Clarendon Street (which was also in a stupid location) was closed, though Clifton (which isn’t too bad) is still operating, and Clarendon’s operations moved once and for all to Watnall. At no point during any of this did DVSA (or DSA, as it then was) “close” any test centre without providing alternative venues. In fact, in some cases the number of test slots available increased with the changes.
As far as test capacities go, Clifton only has two tests going out at any time, and I don’t think it operates for the same number of hours as the main centres. It has (or had) the lowest pass rate of all the Nottingham test centres, and I am convinced that this was largely down to the horrendous road works when the A453 was being widened, and the fact that the A453 is one of the busiest roads in the country. Instructors can pontificate as much as they like about how learners “should be able to drive anywhere”, but the simple fact is that any new driver going for their test is statistically much more likely to make a mistake – and for it to be deemed “serious” – around heavy traffic and variable road restrictions than they are on a semi-deserted industrial estate, or running around virtually the same route every test (as was the case with Beeston during the gridlock created by tram works, which resulted in its pass rate being the highest by a huge margin until someone noticed the blip and set things right). I’m not sure how many tests are conducted at a time out of Watnall, but I am certain it is a lot less than the 6-8 maximum at Colwick and Beeston at the time of writing.
One area where I’m not so quick to defend DVSA is on the matter of test waiting times. Not the waiting time per se, but how they think they can reduce it with only a couple of new examiners. Even now, with a capacity for up to 20 tests per time slot (or 100-120 tests per day) throughout Nottingham, the waiting time is going up by approximately one week per month. Simple arithmetic shows that the only way this can ever be brought down – bar a sudden and catastrophic collapse in the numbers of people wanting tests – is to significantly increase the number of tests conducted. An extra 10 tests a day from a couple of new examiners is a drop in the ocean, and it needs ten times that to make a dent in the arrears.
And this is where it gets potentially very messy. From what I understand, DVSA wants its staff to be able to conduct one extra test per working day, and a little more simple arithmetic shows that this would definitely provide the necessary increase in the total number of tests conducted. A time and motion study has been conducted which is looking into that, and it will come as no surprise to discover that examiners are not particularly happy about this. They say it will mean that the latest tests in winter will come back in the dark, which is both dangerous and unfair. Furthermore – and this is one reason I would never want to be an examiner – they already have only a short time between tests to fill in their paperwork, and this will be reduced still further. Tests returning late (not uncommon due to Nottingham’s incompetently managed road works) would cut that time back even further. This extra test will almost certainly add fuel to the already burning fire over civil service pensions and working conditions (i.e. more strikes).
If you try to book a test now (start of May 2016), the first free dates (not including cancellations) turn up in mid- to late-August for all Nottingham test centres – except Watnall. Watnall is completely booked for the entire availability window that DVSA’s booking system allows. All those whingeing ADIs could easily book tests elsewhere and get much better test dates than they are suggesting is possible, and I wonder why they don’t.
DVSA is wholly responsible for not dealing with the test waiting time problem MUCH sooner, and MUCH more effectively than it has done. It has taken them almost two years to do almost nothing, and the problem continues to worsen by the day. It’s got nothing to do with candidates “not being trained properly” and failing their tests, because pass rates are roughly the same as they have always been – 47% every year since 2011, with a 1% increase each year from 44% in 2007. In other words, it has stayed virtually the same for at least a decade (if you ignore the fact that Beeston was passing too many people during the tram works due to the piss-easy test route it was using).
And finally, just a repeat reminder for the stupid ones out there: Watnall isn’t closing. Even if the site does, tests will still be conducted from somewhere fairly close by. You won’t have to go to Lincoln unless you are VERY stupid. Even now, if you drove more than an extra mile or two with your pupils, you could get MUCH better test dates if you were prepared to cover the other test centres (I will do tests at all of them, though Watnall has never appeared on my radar, probably because it is permanently fully booked).
Update: As of 2018, the three test centres in Nottingham are Chilwell, Watnall, and Colwick. Lead times at all of them are at least 6 weeks (not including cancellation dates and sudden Saturday overtime slots). Since I wrote this article, I have started using Watnall quite a lot (and the parking is not quite in the location I gave in the image now).