§ Mr. DismoreTo ask the Secretary of State for Transport what the average wait for a driving test is(a) at Mill Hill test center, (b) in London and (c) in each of the other regions of the United Kingdom; what plans he has to improve delays in giving test dates; and if he will make a statement. [167091]
§ Mr. JamiesonThe Driving Standards Agency has a national target for the average annual waiting time for a practical car driving test in England, Scotland and Wales of six weeks. The current national average waiting time for a test is 9.8 weeks. The current waiting time for a practical car driving test at the Mill Hill test center is 17 weeks. The average waiting time for a test in the London and South East area is 13.3 weeks. Waiting times for a practical car driving test vary in the other areas of Great Britain as follows:
Area Average waiting time (weeks) Midlands and Eastern 10.3 Wales and Western 7.2 Northern 9.7 Scotland 4.9 In Northern Ireland, the Driver and Vehicle Testing Agency has a target average waiting time for a practical car driving test of 23 days. The average waiting time across test centers in Northern Ireland is currently 27 days.
In order to reduce the current high waiting times for tests in Great Britain to the six week waiting time target, the Driving Standards Agency recruited 283 new driving examiners in the last financial year and plans to recruit a further 330 in the coming year. An extra 7.30 am test slot is being added to weekday programmes in some test centers and tests are now offered on Sundays. The agency is deploying as many driving examiners as possible from Scotland to the London and South East area to tackle the problem of high waiting times there. In the context of its Business Plan for 2004–05, I have set the agency a target to bring national waiting times down to six weeks by January 2005.