This is an old, old story and all references to ‘DSA’ should be read as ‘DVSA’. Also, being almost ten years old, it is not likely to be numerically accurate any more.
When you look around the “instructorsphere” (new word), one thing that strikes you is how everything is always DSA’s fault. Too many instructors? Blame DSA. Instructors charging stupid low prices? Blame DSA. Pupil fails their test? Blame DSA. And so it continues.
One topic that keeps cropping up is test cheats and bogus instructors – particularly when the alleged culprit is of, shall we say, non-UK origin. But instructors are definitely not discriminatory in any way – we know that because they always say so before they launch in with both Doc Martens.
Another freedom of information (FOI) request reveals that DSA has spent “at least” £4.3m over 18 months on private detectives using covert surveillance techniques to catch impersonators and “other cheats”.
Of course, this distilled version will be enough to have certain people snapping the ropes in anger as they hoist their English flags up their garden flagpoles of a morning because of the amount of money involved. However, they will conveniently ignore the fact that there were around 5,000 notifications of suspected criminal behaviour in the same period.
That works out at around £860 per investigation. Which is absolute peanuts.
Overall, there were 511 arrests (so 10% of investigations came up trumps), leading to 141 convictions (2.8%) and 163 police cautions (3.3%). Not every accusation is either true or can be proven, but 60% of those arrested were nailed. If DSA had pursued cases it wasn’t likely to win, the spend would have been much, much higher and the success rate much, much lower.
According to the article, DSA said it will continue to spend in the region of £270,000 a month to try to catch cheats. At one of my test centres alone, there would be not far off 1,000 tests conducted each month, and if the rate of cheating is even as low as 0.1%, that would work out to one investigation (at around £860, remember). There are over 320 test centres in the UK mainland, which would add up to around £275,000 per month.
So, bingo! The numbers add up.
Yes, yes, we all know that some areas are worse than others, but since we aren’t seers (well, some ADIs think they are) we – and DSA – have to play the odds.
The bottom line is that £4.3m isn’t that much when you consider the scale of both the operation and the problem.