Britain’s persistent driving test backlog is now projected to continue until autumn 2027, Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has confirmed.
The revelation comes as Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) figures show the average waiting time for a test last month stood at nearly 22 weeks.
This starkly contrasts with approximately five weeks in February 2020, before the coronavirus pandemic significantly disrupted services.
Addressing MPs, Ms Alexander acknowledged the public's frustration, stating: "I totally understand people’s frustrations."
She insisted "we have done a lot" to address the issue, but conceded that "demand is still very high."
The agency's initial goal to cut average waiting times to seven weeks by the end of 2025 was first pushed back by Ms Alexander to summer 2026, before she admitted last November that even this revised target was unattainable.
Giving evidence to the Transport Select Committee on Wednesday, she said: “Realistically, this is going to take a long time to sort this problem out, and I think by the autumn of next year we should be back down to the seven-week aspiration that we’ve got.”
The minister went on: “My aspiration is to get us back down to a point where, when someone is booking a test, they’re not having to wait months on end to get one, which is the situation for some people in some locations at the moment.”
Ms Alexander said the Government is “taking this really seriously”, such as by recruiting more driving test examiners and training them faster, using military examiners and reforming the booking process to combat misuse.
She added: “The action that we’ve taken in the last couple of months, it’s too early to draw completely definitive conclusions on it, but we have seen evidence that swap volumes have gone down by 70 per cent and refund volumes also fell by around a third since May 12, which I think indicates that this sort of speculative booking and then rebooking, perhaps there’s less of that happening.”
