By KATHRYN KNIGHT
When Evan Castleton failed his driving test in May 2023, he was determined to try again ‘as soon as possible’. Like millions of learner drivers today, however, that wasn’t quite soon enough.
‘When I tried to rebook my test online, there was no availability for at least six months anywhere in the UK,’ Evan, now 22, recalls. ‘I started setting an alarm for 5.50am so I could be at my computer by 6am on Mondays, when new slots are released.’
Ten weeks of early alarms later, the building merchant worker finally managed to get a test: it wasn’t until February the following year in York, 300 miles and a £200 train journey from his home in Brighton.
Not ideal. Not least because, a week beforehand, Evan’s test was cancelled without explanation.
‘The test was rescheduled for some weeks later but, by this point, I couldn’t afford to take it again as I’d already lost £500 on booking trains, an instructor and a hotel,’ he says.
It’s taken another 16 months for Evan to finally get his second test – this time in Oxford. While that’s comparatively close to his home – only 100 miles away – it’s little consolation.
Red light: Across the country, as many as three million learner drivers are finding it almost impossible to book a test
‘It’s incredibly frustrating,’ he says. ‘I want to join the police force – but that’s all been put on hold for the past two years as I need a full driving licence. If I fail again, what happens then?’
Evan is far from alone. Across the country, as many as three million learner drivers are finding it almost impossible to book a test.
Consecutive Covid lockdowns followed by driving examiner strikes in 2022 and 2023 have caused months-long backlogs to build up over the past five years.
And now more nefarious actors are cashing in – with middlemen and fraudsters using sophisticated ‘bots’ (automated software that can input data at speed) to input false provisional licence numbers, block-book test slots and sell them on at a premium.
It’s turned the once-simple process into an online Wild West. The logjam is so severe that Ellen Pasternack, 30, the founder of campaigning website End the Backlog, calculates that around one million additional tests would have to be provided in the next year to clear the wait.
‘Millions of people are unable to get driving tests, which in many cases means lost job opportunities,’ she says. ‘People desperate for a test are also travelling up and down the country and paying hundreds of pounds for tests booked through dodgy unofficial sites.’
It’s one reason she launched a petition last August (which now has more than 33,000 signatures) demanding more approved examiners to step in to plug the gaps.
Last week, that call was answered – in part. Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander pledged to provide at least 10,000 extra tests a month
by increasing examiner training and introducing overtime pay incentives. So enormous is the ‘totally unacceptable’ backlog, however, she acknowledged it would take more than a year to slash the average wait time from 20 weeks to seven.
In the meantime, desperate learner drivers are having to turn to other, shadier means, via a growing black market.
Scammers and middlemen are feeding false provisional licence numbers to bots so they can snap up the £62 test slots released through the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) every week – making it harder for learners to book slots directly.
These are then sold on through Facebook and WhatsApp groups, as well as specially designed smartphone apps, which often disappear as quickly as they’ve appeared.
Buyers can then correct the personal details for the test, including the provisional licence number.
Many learner drivers anxious to secure a slot before the two-year expiry date of their driving theory test have forked out as much as £300 to get a test this way – five times the legitimate cost.
If this sounds illegal, it isn’t – as Tommy Sandhu, the founder of SmartLearner Driving School in the West Midlands, explains. ‘Usually driving schools would manage bookings for their learners, but later apps were developed that could look for cancellations,’ he tells me.
‘It worked really well and made sense for learners who, for example, wanted to retake their test but were working all day and couldn’t get to their phone.
‘But then, after Covid, boom. The apps started buying up all the tests and this huge black market developed.’
Swindle: Scammers and middlemen are feeding false provisional licence numbers to bots so they can snap up the £62 test slots released through the DVSA every week
Tommy, 55, who oversees up to 80 instructors and around 1,000 learners, says he has seen first-hand the impact this has had on his students.
‘Before, there was a process where you took your lessons, booked a test seven or eight weeks ahead, and worked to that,’ he says.
‘Now, it’s a Wild West. It might be in three days if you’re willing to fork out, or it might be in six months, in which case you need to keep paying the average £25-£35 hourly cost of lessons.
‘It’s very unsettling and for those who need to drive for work or domestic reasons, there is a huge pressure.’
But ravenous bots aren’t the only peril facing learner drivers. Scammers have also set up fake websites masquerading as driving schools to trick users into paying for lessons and test packages that don’t exist.
‘We have seen an increase in this type of scam in the past year,’ says Seb Goldin, chief executive of driving school Red, which operates nationwide.
‘The mother of one of our students handed over £800, then another £200, to someone who set up a fake website and claimed to be a Red instructor. The website disappeared and no instructor ever showed up.’
This works as a ‘double scam’, he added, because it also allows fraudsters to harvest provisional licence numbers, which learners must input to ‘register’ on their fake sites. Scammers then use these to block-book – and sell on – test slots.
Little wonder that reports of driving test scams to Action Fraud have soared by more than 65 per cent, from 124 reports in 2022 to 205 in 2023.
However, more and more learner drivers are guilty of chicanery of their own. Earlier this month, it emerged that some learners had been using ‘impersonators’ to pass their practical and theory tests, with 2,059 cheating incidents recorded by the DVSA last year.
‘Test centres carry out ID checks but, in some instances, the impersonator is able to emulate the look of the person they are representing,’ Carly Brookfield, chief executive of the Driving Instructors Association, told the BBC.
‘Obviously there is a view that more robust measures will have to be implemented in the future.’
However, she says even some of this can be pinned on the spiralling wait times as people ‘don’t want to have to take that test, fail and wait for another test’.
Depressingly, there is no end in sight although the DVSA has been cracking down on bots and scammers, issuing 375 warnings and suspending 796 accounts in 2023.
A spokesman told the Mail that the Government agency was ‘making progress’ towards recruiting and training driving examiners across the country.
However, the DVSA acknowledged that test waiting times ‘remain high’ due to an increase in demand and a change in customers’ booking behaviour.
For those desperate to get their L-plates off – without being ripped off in the process – what should they do?
Tommy Sandhu recommends passing the theory test first then booking a driving test before starting lessons. ‘This enables us to concentrate on preparing for the test date and adjusting lessons as needed,’ he says.
It’s not quite beating the backlog, he acknowledges, but at least it’s a start.
Not that it will do much to soothe the frazzled learner drivers still waiting for a test date, as summed up by one supporter of the End The Backlog petition.
‘The way we are being treated is absolutely appalling,’ she wrote. ‘Action must be taken to rectify this absolute sham of a system.’
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