BBC Verify has found that three quarters of the 319 driving test centres across Great Britain have hit the maximum average waiting time – of 24 weeks – to book a practical test.

This is the backdrop to the government’s announcement of measures to deal with the delays, which include training more driving examiners and dealing with the issue of bots – automated software – booking up test slots.

The driving tests backlog has been largely building since the Covid pandemic and has been rising since Labour came to power.

BBC Verify obtained data from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) – the body that runs driving tests – in a Freedom of Information request.

The data reveals that as of 24 March 2025:

• Across Great Britain, the average waiting time was 22 weeks, up from 18 weeks when Labour came to power in July 2024
• In Greater London, 28 out of 30 test centres had the maximum waiting time of 24 weeks
• Only one in 10 centres reported an average waiting time shorter than 10 weeks
• Two of the centres with the shortest waits were in Wales: Bala (one week), followed by Bangor (three weeks). Oswestry, just over the border in England also had a three week average wait.

Millie Moyler from Buckinghamshire is nearly 19 years old and has been learning to drive for almost two years. She has been trying to book a test since September 2023.

She says it has been a “strain” on her mental health. Her mum Sara is in a WhatsApp group where she says “hundreds of tests are being sold every week for all locations” at a cost of £200 a test.

The official driving test fee is £62 for weekdays and £75 for evenings, weekends and bank holidays.

Neither Millie nor her mum wish to take this route saying it is “morally wrong” and “compounds the problem”.

“It’s been a ridiculous process,” she says. “Driving is a basic life skill and it shouldn’t be this much of a problem.”

She has now managed to book a test for July, but is worried that if she fails it she will have to wait another two years and keep having to pay for lessons in the meantime to keep her skills up.

Waiting times have increased sharply since the pandemic. At the start of 2020 the average waiting time was six weeks.

Driving tests were suspended completely several times during the Covid outbreak, while there were other times when they were only available for emergency workers and key workers.

That took the average waiting time up to 15 weeks by the end of the pandemic.

The DVSA also says that people are booking their tests much earlier in the learning process meaning they are not always ready by the time their test comes up.

It encourages learners – through its ‘Ready to Pass?’ campaign – to only book their driving test when their instructor agrees they are ready.

Nonetheless, waiting times rose considerably in early 2023. Then there was a temporary fall from October 2023 when the government announced that for six months qualified examiners who were not at the time giving tests would be redeployed.

The government has now announced that redeployment will happen again and overtime payments for examiners will be allowed.

The government has also been talking about how it will tackle bots, which are automated programmes that can find and secure available test slots more quickly than individual customers.

The DVSA has urged people not to buy test slots through social media channels, warning that they may be scams and that people could have to pay more for a test than the official fee.

In January, the government changed the test-booking rules so that:

• Only approved driving instructors (ADI) and the driving schools they work for can book tests
• ADIs may not book tests for learner drivers they are not teaching
• Only one test per provisional licence can be booked in the system at a time.

Transport Secretary Heidi Alexander has now announced she will be launching an “accelerated consultation” in May to improve the booking system and block bots from accessing tests.

Tests are made available 24 weeks – almost six months – in advance. It is not possible to book more than 24 weeks in advance.

The average waiting time is the number of weeks it will be at a test centre until 10% of tests are available for a particular week.

For example, in a test centre with 175 tests available each week, the average waiting time is the first week when 18 or more appointments are still available to book.

Additional reporting by Gerry Georgieva, Daniel Wainwright and Kris Bramwell

Correction: an earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that Oswestry was in Wales.