I’ve written several times recently about test centre closures – both real and imagined – and the subsequent behaviour of ADIs in the areas covered by the centres in question.
This report in Herald Scotland pushes further the idea that tests could be conducted from a variety of locations – supermarkets, libraries, community centres, and so on.
The article says:
The test centres are self-funding, with costs paid by learners sitting their tests. But is thought the savings would help pay for the £71 million cost of building 66 multi-purpose test centres across Britain.
I’m not sure if that is quite correct. MPTCs were not built to be LESS efficient than what was there previously. They were built to be MORE efficient. It stands to reason that ONE MPTC on an industrial estate is going to cost less to run than TWO or THREE community-based test centres shoe-horned above shops and into converted terraced houses in run-down estates. The explanation given above is another Mickey Mouse coalition way of trying to blame things on Labour.
And let’s not forget something no one else appears to be mentioning. The publicity may be centred upon the ramblings of certain self-styled community champions (“we MUST keep a testing facility in our village… won’t someone PLEEEASE think of the children”), but 90% of the public detest learner drivers and would like nothing better than for the test centre next door to bugger off somewhere else.
Driving 15 miles to the nearest test centre is not the problem people like Mike Weir and Sandra Osborne suggest. Some people have to do that anyway (I had one last week who lived 17 miles from the test centre, and several more greater than 10 miles away), and I’d like to see where it is written that no one should ever have to end up travelling further than they do now just because their local centre moves somewhere else.
Commonsense is being swallowed up and masked by amateurish political schemings.
I wonder if those supermarkets, libraries, and community centres will “allow” tests to be conducted for free?
And one more thing: test centres being further away would be less of a problem if local councils did their bloody roadworks more efficiently instead of digging big holes, putting up barriers and lights, and then doing naff all for two months. The biggest worry when travelling is not the distance, but the time.