Passenger Carrying Vehicle Test (Hansard, 8 March 1994)

§ Mr. Key

Responsibility for the subject of the question has been delegated to the Driving Standards Agency under its chief executive, Dr. John Ford. I have asked him to arrange for a reply to be given.

Letter from S. J. Ford to Mr. Michael Shersby, dated 7 March 1994: The Secretary of State for Transport has asked me to reply to your Question about the percentage of drivers who pass the passenger carrying vehicle test (PCV) at their first, second or third attempt. We do not routinely collect this information as it does not directly affect the operation of the Agency.

For consistency of testing, and in fairness to the candidate, it is preferable if the examiner is not made aware of the number of previous attempts a candidate has made at a test. The overall pass rate on PCV tests in the last two financial years was:

	Per rent.
1991–92	56
1992–93	53

As part of our second Customer Survey, completed last year—the results of which were published in September—we asked a random sample of all our customers whether it was their first test or a repeat attempt. Of 355 people in the sample who had recently taken their PCV test, 81 per cent. had just passed; of these passes, 40 per cent. were at the first attempt, 33 per cent. at the second, 18 per cent. at the third and 7 per cent. at the fourth.