Well, I had my first post-lockdown test today, and she passed with six driver faults. Well done to her!
Reading some of the horror stories on social media, I wasn’t sure what to expect when arriving at the test centre. Half of me wouldn’t have been surprised to see armed guards at the gates and outside the waiting room going from some of the (probably embellished) accounts of other people’s tests.
Arriving in the car park five minutes (as clearly requested on the DVSA emails) before we were due, it was clear that alternate bays were coned-off to facilitate distancing. So we reverse-parked into one of them. Or rather I did from the passenger seat, since the pupil’s nerves meant she’d picked one with a cone in it, and with five minutes to play with there wasn’t time to piss about. She also wanted the loo.
On approaching the waiting room for the toilet, an examiner came to the door and opened it manually so she could go into the foyer, and no questions asked. The examiners are using the usual waiting room as an office so they can distance properly, and it is off limits to instructors.
One odd thing was that the pupil had to sign some sort of paper to say they were covered by insurance. Never experienced that before – and the paper was left in the car at the end of the test! The examiner wiped a few surfaces down before he got in, which is DVSA policy according to emails and the sign on the waiting room windows. I have no problem with that whatsoever, since examiners have no idea of who and what is turning up to test. In my case, I use a fogging machine to sanitise my car daily, and all my pupils that I’m currently teaching know my own isolating requirements (two have cancelled in the last week, one because she was unwell, but is OK now and it was just a sickness bug, and another is out of circulation for two weeks because his sister works at a school which has just had two positive COVID-19 tests, and although she has tested negative she still has to isolate). I noted that the test involved a satnav.
I’ve bought a waterproof cape in anticipation of being outside when it is wet at some point. Today was a beautifully warm and sunny day, so it wasn’t needed. I noticed that five out of six other instructors were sat together in two groups. I went outside the test centre compound and found somewhere quiet next to the river. My car has a tracker in it, and I can see its movement in real time, so I know exactly where it is at any time – useful for knowing when to make my way to the car park or (in rare cases) where the examiner has left it if there is a walk-back.
As my pupil returned to the car park, I made no attempt to go and listen to the debrief as I normally would, and kept my distance (as requested by DVSA in its emails). I noted that no windows were fully open – just the front ones a few centimetres. The examiner opened the car door wide as he did the debrief, but I stayed back. She gave me the thumbs up as I stood 6 metres away and shouted that she’d passed. I had to get a little closer at one point because she and the examiner wanted my opinion over taking her licence away, or leaving it with her to apply for her full licence herself. I explained that there could well be a delay in getting her new licence in the current climate, so unless she needed her provisional for ID purposes it made sense to surrender it and get things moving quickly (in any case, I pointed out she had her passport as ID if necessary). The debrief took as long as it usually does – no rush of any kind.
I gave her a sanitising wipe to wipe down contact points on her side before we switched seats for me to drive her home, while she made calls and sent texts to friends and family.
Absolutely no problems whatsoever. If it’s like this in future, the only issue is going to be the rain. DVSA doing their job, me doing mine.