As the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) continues its battle against long waiting times and test booking abuse, sweeping changes have been introduced to the driving test booking system.
The reforms are designed to stop bots, clamp down on rogue operators, and ensure learner drivers can access tests more fairly. But while many instructors welcome the direction of travel, some are warning there could also be unintended side effects.
We spoke to Geoff Newman, a driving instructor at Sevenoaks Driving Lessons, to get his perspective from the front line.
“The DVSA are absolutely trying to do the right thing”
According to Newman, the core motivation behind the changes is understandable.
“I genuinely believe the DVSA are operating with the very best intentions,” he explains. “They’re trying to make the system fairer and increase availability for genuine pupils.”
For years, driving instructors and learner drivers alike have complained about industrial-scale abuse of the booking system. Newman says the problem became especially severe when automated software — commonly referred to as bots — began targeting newly released test slots.
“Some rogue driving instructors and third-party operators were booking driving tests for people who weren’t even their pupils,” says Newman. “They’d use bots to accelerate the process, meaning that the moment a test became available, it was snapped up almost instantly by a fictitious booking.”
The result was a distorted marketplace where genuine learner drivers often struggled to find practical test appointments, while speculative bookings were later resold or rearranged for profit.
Local tests for local learners
One of the most significant changes aims to ensure learners book tests closer to where they actually live and learn.
Newman says that issue had become increasingly common in areas like Sevenoaks.
“I’ve had pupils travelling from all over the country for automatic driving lessons in Sevenoaks simply because there happened to be more availability here,” he says. “But they weren’t familiar with the roads, the layouts, the traffic systems, or the local driving conditions. They were just desperate to get a test.”
That often led to disappointment.
“When learners take a test in an unfamiliar area, the chances of failing inevitably increase. They haven’t built confidence on those roads. So in many ways, encouraging people to test locally makes complete sense.”
“They may have gone a little too far”
However, Newman believes some useful services may have become casualties of the crackdown.
In recent years, cancellation-finding apps and services became extremely popular among learners trying to secure earlier appointments. While some operators abused the system, others simply helped genuine candidates fill unused slots efficiently.
“There were actually some very good cancellation services that genuinely helped pupils find last-minute availability,” says Newman. “Sadly, many of those services are no longer functional because of the changes.”
And that raises a new concern.
“My worry is that we could now end up with occasional test slots going unused because there’s no efficient mechanism to redistribute those cancellations quickly.”
A hopeful long-term outlook
Despite those reservations, Newman remains optimistic about the future of the system.
“Ultimately, I think this is still a really promising move,” he says. “If the reforms work as intended, then hopefully in about a year’s time I’ll be able to simply say to my pupils: ‘You’re test ready — go online and book a test for the next couple of weeks.’”
For learner drivers across the UK, that would represent a major return to normality after years of backlog frustrations, inflated waiting times, and booking chaos.
Whether the latest reforms strike the right balance between security and flexibility remains to be seen — but for instructors like Geoff Newman, the direction of travel at least appears positive.
