Driving Tests: East Midlands
The question
To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, what steps her Department is taking to reduce waiting times for practical driving tests in (a) Leicester East constituency, (b) Leicestershire, and (c) the East Midlands.
Answered by Department for Transport
The Government set out a comprehensive package of measures in April 2025 to tackle long waiting times across the whole of Great Britain, aiming to deliver around 10,000 additional tests per month. A key step was reintroducing overtime incentives. The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) conducted 1.99 million tests between April 2025 and March 2026, a record and 8.6% (159,000) higher than the previous year.
DVSA has also made changes to make the booking system fairer, as well as continuing to run national recruitment campaigns for driving examiners (DE) across the country.
From recent recruitment in the East Midlands, including for test centres serving Leicestershire and the Leicester East constituency, DVSA currently has 10 potential new DEs booked onto training courses, with a further 22 potential new DEs undergoing pre-employment checks.
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