This report in the Louth Leader online newspaper says that the local test centre could be re-opened in an office in the local leisure centre.
I looked up the story and discovered that Louth was scheduled to close in January this year. The nearest alternative test centre was 17 miles away at Grimsby. Typically, a load of ADIs opposed it and came up with some ridiculous estimates of how much extra it would cost pupils to take their tests there – something like their life savings, an extra 20 hours of lessons (that one is a real claim, by the way), and several body organs. These claims were grossly exaggerated, as usual – particularly the one about how many extra hours it would take.
Naturally, someone in local government is anxious to make a name for themselves and is fighting the corner. Cllr Pauline Watson is even offering to pay the rent on the room at the leisure centre for a year – a gesture which I’m certain isn’t intended to try and belittle the DSA.
I wonder if Cllr Watson has considered the extra risks associated with having learners driving around a leisure centre, where I would imagine there are kids? The Meridian centre has a swimming pool, a leisure pool with flume, and child care facilities (i.e. it’s a creche) – amongst other things. If it’s anywhere near the same as the leisure centres around here, there will be kids everywhere.
And Cllr Watson wants driving school cars hanging around?
The best part is that these ADIs have said:
It is standard practice to have lessons on the roads used by test centres
Actually, it might be common practice, but it is far from being standard. If people can drive – if they’re taught properly – they don’t need to spend much time around the test centre at all.
The idea of driving school cars messing about in a leisure centre car park – it’s “standard practice”, remember – makes your toes curl! These people don’t mess about, you know. There would be so many of them crawling over the place that there wouldn’t be anywhere for the centre users to park.
Even if Cllr Watson hasn’t considered this, I would be very surprised if the DSA didn’t either.