{"id":18274,"date":"2015-09-21T01:00:48","date_gmt":"2015-09-21T00:00:48","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=18274"},"modified":"2015-09-21T01:00:48","modified_gmt":"2015-09-21T00:00:48","slug":"test-waiting-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/?p=18274","title":{"rendered":"Test Waiting Times"},"content":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve heard a lot of complaints lately about the waiting times for driving tests. DVSA knows there is a problem and it is trying to deal with it<\/a> though what that article doesn’t mention is the back door solution also being looked at, which involves making the test so easy that a monkey could pass it<\/a>. Mark my words: that second solution is the one that they\u2019ll go with (assuming the public consultation that will follow the trial a) doesn\u2019t overwhelmingly come out against it, and b) if it does, the consultation isn\u2019t ignored).\"Driving<\/p>\n

That Despatch article explains why waiting times have gone up. First, there is the upturn in the economy, which means people are taking tests in greater numbers (for many, it adds a vital string to their bow when job hunting). Second, DVSA says it has had more examiners retiring. Third, DVSA says there has been a surge in 20-somethings taking their tests after putting it off (I\u2019m not sure why they give this as a separate reason, as it is just the first one worded differently.<\/p>\n

Quite frankly, DVSA should have seen the examiner crisis coming and dealt with it long before it became a problem. Come to think of it, they also ought to have anticipated the country coming out of recession, because it was pretty bloody obvious that it was going to end sooner or later. I detected the upturn as long ago as early 2014 \u2013 I wrote about it on the blog – yet DVSA says it only predicted an increase in the number of tests \u201clate last year\u201d. I\u2019m sure I recall them predicting a fall<\/strong> in the numbers of those taking tests within the same time frame as all of this even though their own data show a sustained increase in tests from January 2013 onwards (and that was during the depths of the recession).<\/p>\n

None of it makes any sense. And to top it all, there\u2019s only been a 5% increase in the number of tests taken between January and March 2015 compared with the same period last year \u2013 yet waiting times have gone up by more than 100%. <\/p>\n

Recruiting new examiners will take ages<\/a>. From what I\u2019ve read on certain forums they\u2019re only on the situational judgement test (the earliest part of recruitment process) even now, in spite of claiming that recruitment started in October 2014 (it may be a different intake, of course, though it is more likely that \u201cstarting\u201d something in civil service speak translates into taking almost a year before it turns into \u201cdoing\u201d it). The actual training and probationary periods alone add up to over 10 months before anyone can be a fully-functioning examiner, and before that there are other tests intended to sort the wheat from the chaff. Allowing for the typical civil service efficiency noted above you can probably add up to six weeks of dead time between each of the stages, so we\u2019ll be lucky if we see any examiners from this source before 2017. Of course, that leaves another possible back door open, and I can see them trying to fast track unsuitable people through the training programme.<\/p>\n

Phew. I wrote a lot more than I intended there once I got going. The real reason I did this article, though, was the because of an item I got on the newsfeeds concerning Liverpool\u2019s test waiting times<\/a> \u2013 between 9 and 13 weeks, apparently. Well, my local test centres are officially claiming between 9 and 13 weeks, but I can assure you that one pupil who booked a test a few weeks ago could only get one in January 2016. When I worked it out, it must have been about 19 or 20 weeks. <\/strong>That\u2019s around 10 weeks more than the official figure, and it\u2019s a discrepancy I have been seeing for the whole of this year \u2013 with actual waiting times being considerably (and consistently) greater than the officially reported ones.<\/p>\n

I also note from that news item that a local instructor is claiming that the long waiting times are costing him work, because people want tests quickly and they therefore go to other parts of the country if they can\u2019t get them in Liverpool! Now, it may be a Liverpool thing, and perhaps people there really do go elsewhere if they can\u2019t get an early test date. But the question I would ask is: where? The Manchester area has official waiting times of between 5 and 9 weeks, which in reality is probably closer to 15 weeks. Leeds is officially almost as bad as Liverpool. Anyone traveling further afield than that is crazy. My own pupils have been shopping around, I must admit, but only to book tests at the local test centre with the best time. Anyone who comes to me in September wanting to pass before Christmas, I tell them straight that they have got virtually no chance \u2013 and especially not if they haven\u2019t even done their theory test yet.<\/p>\n

Incidentally, that same instructor also claims his franchisees all have full diaries. In that case, you can\u2019t say that you\u2019re losing work \u2013 turning it down because you can\u2019t accommodate it is not \u201closing\u201d it. You\u2019re only losing it if you want it and need it, but it goes elsewhere.<\/p>\n

He also says that DVSA don\u2019t pay examiners to work weekends anymore. Again, I can\u2019t speak for Liverpool, but DVSA says in that Despatch article I linked to at the start that examiners are being encouraged \u201cto work additional hours to provide more tests.\u201d One of my current pupils has got a Sunday <\/strong>test in mid-October, which he booked in early August (that was 10 weeks even then), so \u2013 and as I say, unless Liverpool is different \u2013 that instructor\u2019s comments are incorrect.\"No.<\/p>\n

Another Liverpool instructor is quoted as saying that the number of tests decreased over the last few years. I refer again to the official DVSA figures, which do not back up this claim at all. In December 2012 they carried out around 100,000 tests, but since then the number has steadily increased, to over 150,000 in April 2015. The most tests conducted in a single month was around 170,000 in October 2007 so we are very nearly at that same level right now.<\/p>\n

The only relevant factor has<\/strong> to be the number of people eligible for (and trying to) take the driving test. Irrespective of retirements or anything else, if they are conducting almost as many tests as they were back in 2007 (and they are), then if the waiting time is increasing it simply has<\/strong> to be just that more people want tests than in 2007! And only that.<\/p>\n

Of course, you then have to ask who these additional test candidates really are. Can they all be 20-somethings who decided not to learn during the recession? My own observations suggest not.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I\u2019ve heard a lot of complaints lately about the waiting times for driving tests. DVSA knows there is a problem and it is trying to deal with it though what that article doesn’t mention is the back door solution also being looked at, which involves making the test so easy that a monkey could pass […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[80,84,87,82],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-18274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-adi-related","category-dvsa-related","category-news","category-training"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=18274"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/18274\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=18274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=18274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/diaryofanadi.co.uk\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=18274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}