Teesside driving instructor reckons changes to booked tests won't help waiting times

A driving instructor in Teesside says long waiting times for tests is not going to be improved with new changes coming into effect.

It will now only be possible to make cancellations or changes 10 working days before a booked test slot - compared to three working days previously.

Chris Flower runs Flower School of Motoring in Middlesbrough and he said: "In Teesside the current waiting times are approximately six months. At the moment in April you can't get a driving test in Middlesbrough until at least September. All the tests that can get released on a Monday morning are taken by 8am and the tests go on at 6am.

"We as an industry get a lot of people messaging on last minute cancellation apps for a test in a couple of days and we can't take them, so the 10 day thing is going to increase probably people taking the test in their own cars.

"It will possibly increase the risk to the examiners because there's going to be potentially more people just having a go, rather than listening to the advice of their instructors and saying 'you're not ready.' This also increases the potential risk to the public as they may be doing this in their own car of which the examiner doesn't have dual control.

"We should introduce that only dual controlled vehicles are allowed to do driving tests. This would free up a lot of spaces of people doing it in their own cars and it will also increase the amount of people who are going who are ready. I also feel we should increase the test fee from £62 to £100.

"Although there's a lot of things being done to try and help cut the waiting times, we need to accept that this is the new normal and that it is going to be harder for people to be able to get driving tests for the immediate future."

He tells us his thoughts about a campaign to recruit and train new driving test examiners: "The campaign is a great idea but the problem we've got is we haven't got enough people wanting to be driving examiners. And although we're trying to recruit, the bigger problem is maintaining them once they've been recruited as we've had a lot of driving examiners go back to being driving instructors."

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