The UK’s Driver and Car Requirements Company (DVSA) has appointed a brand new chief exec to deal with spiraling waits for sensible driving assessments with bots overrunning its ageing reserving system.

Beverley Warmington will be part of the company on January 5. “I’ve each confidence she’s going to grip the driving take a look at backlog and robustly oversee the reforms wanted to make sure learners can get on the highway when they’re actually prepared and secure to take action,” said roads and buses minister Simon Lightwood.

Most sensible driving take a look at slots at DVSA facilities are snapped up instantly after launch – 24 weeks prematurely. The Nationwide Audit Workplace (NAO) discovered that 198 (70 p.c) of the company’s 240 everlasting take a look at facilities reported a 24-week wait in September. The common wait is 22 weeks, with DVSA not anticipating to fulfill a seven-week goal till November 2027.

A lot of the demand comes from two forms of paid bot providers. Cancellation checkers alert candidates to newly launched slots, generally reserving on their behalf. Resellers inform candidates to guide any nationwide slot, then cost them to swap it for a bot-booked take a look at at their most well-liked location and date.

A DVSA survey of 21,656 candidates discovered 31 p.c of candidates used third-party resellers, with some paying as much as £500 versus the £62 official weekday charge.

The NAO mentioned DVSA has struggled to deal with bots resulting from technical points and staffing shortages. Its reserving system is sort of 18 years previous and has what the report referred to as “vital safety and operational limitations,” with excessive ranges of demand making it unstable at peak occasions.

It dealt with 50 million internet requests a day via bot safety in September 2025, up from round 10 million a day in September 2024, with in the future seeing greater than 94 million requests.

When the DVSA fights again, the bots usually win. “Third events develop bots at tempo, rapidly overcoming any new safety measures,” the NAO mentioned. “For instance, DVSA’s introduction of a key anti-bot measure was neutralized by bot builders inside in the future.”

The company has no devoted in-house employees working to defend it in opposition to bots, relying as a substitute on present employees growing experience and help from suppliers. DVSA mentioned it has automated some bot safety work and is continuous to search for methods to guard itself higher. Its webpages on GOV.UK embrace particular directions on what to do if specific error messages appear during booking.

In addition to the influence on candidates, bot bookings hamper DVSA’s means to ascertain precise demand for assessments, notably by space given bookings made purely to swap for different ones. Maps within the report present bookings for DVSA’s Inverness heart constituted of addresses in southern England and bookings for Launceston in Cornwall constituted of northern Scotland, though it says there could also be causes in some instances, together with college students dwelling away from dwelling.

The company permits instructors and companies to guide then swap assessments between candidates they’re educating, with 327,000 swapped in 2024 (17 p.c of the overall). This 12 months, DVSA closed 880 enterprise accounts used for extreme reserving and swapping, and restricted swaps per driver from 30 to 10.

From spring 2026, only candidates can book practical tests, with two modifications to a reserving allowed and even then solely to a take a look at heart close to the unique reserving.

General, the NAO noticed low examiner numbers as the primary situation. “We suggest that DVSA critiques what’s driving the elevated demand for assessments and appears at what is required to scale up the examiner workforce for elevated take a look at supply,” mentioned report director Lee Summerfield.

Slot-booking bots have simply made issues worse. ®


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