According to the DVSA (Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency), there are roughly 500,000 learner drivers waiting to take a test, with the average waiting time being 14 weeks but some have had to wait twice as long in the worst effected parts of the country. Driving tests only resumed in April this year, allowing the backlog to swell over the course of 12 months of repeated lockdowns, with the Transport Committee informed that the situation will not return to normal until 2023. The Mailonline has the story.
The delay means learners are having to fork out thousands of pounds for extra driving lessons as they are required to keep up their skills to ensure they are ready when their slot comes round.
Others who had taken their theory test – a requirement to sit the practical – were forced to pay for another as it had expired before they were able to take their practical exam.
Figures from the DVSA show that the number of tests conducted in the U.K. between April and June this year was 26% lower when compared with the same period in 2019.
Critical workers, such as those in health and social care, were still able to book tests throughout the various lockdowns.
Peter Hearn, operations director at the DVSA, told the Commons Transport Committee: “The backlog on car testing at the moment is double what we would normally expect.
We normally expect a backlog of about 250,000 tests – we’re double that at the moment.
We have had significant periods in which we have not been able to test drivers so we are now in a period in which we are trying to recover those services.
We’re doing lots of additional things right across the organisation with additional hours, we’re bringing people in that can test.”
Hearn told the committee the agency was recruiting extra staff, including examiners and support staff, and said they had already hired 90 with plans to bring in up to 300.
Worth reading in full.
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Once again, this demonstrates that the youngest of the population was hit the hardest – disproportionally.
Imagine having already taken your theory test and passed, only to find out, through no fault of your own, you have to fork out for another one along with additional lessons, all because the government decided to abandon it’s pandemic strategy and locked down the country needlessly.
The issues arising from a locked down country are only now really rearing their ugly heads: suicides, depression, NHS waiting lists measuring years, hugely reduced population immunity, failed businesses, etc.
Which is severely affecting some youngsters employment chances. My son and next doors son (both 21) are in this situation, luckily they have Mums who will/can be taxi not all are so lucky. We live in an area where many jobs are not accessible by public transport. As if having their education f**ked up for the last 2 years wasn’t enough.
Early during Lockdown lite (last summer) I met a young chap who had to take two lengthy bus journeys to get to work in a distribution centre.
Previously he had made the much shorter cross country journey on his motorbike.
Sadly his Provisional licence was ‘timed out’ since the DVSA were not conducting tests because lockdown. Not only that but so had his theory test so, when the DVLC finally got back to work, he would have to start from scratch.
I posted about it at the time here at Lockdownsceptics under the general topic of unintended consequences.
Ed. Exactly as described by JIGR1969 above at the very same time of posting
I doubt this is news to the majority of us who predicted from the start many of, if not all, the problems we are encountering now. Whenever anyone brings them up I do not hestitate to tell them that they are a consequence of lockdown policies and all associated restrictions.
Likewise, lost count of the number of times someone has blamed their misfortune on the Covid when in reality it was caused by lockdown. They require remaining.
“Hundreds of thousands of learner drivers are waiting up to 24 weeks to take their test in some parts of the UK due to a backlog caused by the coronavirus pandemic.”
DM as usual playing its part in maintaining the panicker propaganda.
An honest, but cautious, way of expressing the truth would have been:
“Hundreds of thousands of learner drivers are waiting up to 24 weeks to take their test in some parts of the UK due to a backlog caused by
the coronavirus pandemicthe government’s policy choices in response to the coronavirus“.Much more honest and accurate would be:
“Hundreds of thousands of learner drivers are waiting up to 24 weeks to take their test in some parts of the UK due to a backlog caused by
the coronavirus pandemicthe government’s panic over-reaction to the latest new cold virus to hit humanity“.That Lockdow/Covid Pandemic willful ‘confusion’ has been an irritating constant from politicians and the media since April last year.
There’s a better word than ‘confusion’ that I can’t recall offhand, confabulation or something.
Yes, “if you fuck up or just don’t wish to do something, just blame the pandemic” has been the mantra from day one.
It’s shocking that nobody up there is talking about the “moral hazard” from tolerating this sort of attitude (which was quickly picked up from politicians by all other sorts of tossers across society).
“Moral hazard” used to be a big topic during the financial crisis (if we rescue the bankers, they will just laugh at us and keep behaving the same or worse), but somehow these concerns have completely disappeared during The Pandemic.
Along with the concerns about limitless resort to the magical money tree…
Could have been worse
It’s ok. It’s pointless to get a driver’s licence anyways, since under the New World Order we won’t own cars and we will depend on public transport.
Yes but you will be happy
even if it takes a lot of medicating.
Public transport needs to get a lot better then. Son works at a power station, no public transport services it. He and the other young engineers drive or they run out of workers and we all run out of power.
Coincidentally the govt will likely announce silly e-scooters can be driven on a provisional licence, and blammo, the push towards a prohibition on cars for the plebs moves ever closer,
In a video showing yesterday’s Halloween March in London the seried ranks of ‘boris bikes’ can be seen. Not one of them in use.
Similarly, when the regime forced motorcycle training to halt, and 2-year Compulsory Basic Training (CBT) certificates started to expire, there was a back-bench, genuinely cross party motion to extend them. Amazingly, even my own socialist MP agreed to support it, on the basis that Poors are likely to rely on small capacity motorcycles and scooters, and that it would allow nothing more than riders continuing to do what they’d already been doing safely for 2 years.
Of course, the regime laughed it off and said no, you have to do another training course. Except, you can’t, because we shut the training centres down. Tough.
https://www.bennetts.co.uk/bikesocial/news-and-views/news/2021/february/government-refuses-cbt-extension-during-lockdown
https://www.bitchute.com/video/40Ho2GR6t86Z/
BitChute – MAG BITTER TRUTH –
BAM!