Newslink August 2023

News: DVSA publications
A veteran DVSA watcher finds
plenty of glossy photos and
well-turned graphics to admire
in the DVSA Annual Review
2022-2023, and some facts
and figures to play with in the
Annual Report and Accounts
– but little to comfort him that
the agency is on the case as
far as L-test waiting times are
concerned
When is a report a review, and when is a
review, a report?
I ask this fairly odd question because two
publications landed in July from the DVSA:
The DVSA’s Annual Review for 2022-23, and
the Annual Report and Accounts for the same
period.
They cover, as you might guess, similar
ground: the Review is a lighter publication full
of eye-pleasing graphics and sentences
constructed in a manner that wouldn’t tax a
child in Year 2, while the Annual Report is a
more serious tome, with its breakdowns of
the key facts and figures.
Both are there to tell you how well the
DVSA is doing, so it’s the place to go if you
want to read all about the agency’s successes
over the past 12 months. It’s an annual treat
for those of us who like to pick through the
bones to see what’s what and gauge
progress – all wrapped up in a narrative style
that reminds me of reading Soviet Union
propaganda reports in the 1970s on the
success of the latest Five-Year Plan for
manufacturing tractors.
In other words, it’s a tad biased and tries to
maximise success and deflect attention from
failure.
The key thing is, don’t mention the L-test
waiting times. In Loveday Ryder’s foreword to
both there is an acceptance that the agency
has missed its targets to reduce these a bit...
‘the last few years have been challenging…’
but that ‘we’ve managed to reduce waiting
times for some of our services to prepandemic
levels.’ Emphasis on ‘some’.
But... part from that, we steer clear for the
most part of the one topic that ADIs want to
see pages and pages devoted to. Instead the
documents devotes its attentions to carbon
targets, the setting up of niche HR groups
and various other internal flin-flam.
So what is there to soothe our fevered
brows on waiting times? This...
“The target for waiting times for car
Here’s the DVSA news:
L-test waiting times
aren’t down, folks!
practical tests to be 9 weeks or less by
December 2022 has not been achieved... and
waiting times remain high at 16 weeks.”
You can say that again. Why?
“This is due mainly to the legacy backlogs
caused by suspending services in 2020-21 in
response to COVID-19. Waiting times have
also been impacted by industrial action
during the year. Our recovery has been
significantly delayed.
But never fear, help is at hand...
“To address this, we have recruited and
trained over 460 new driving examiners
since the beginning of recovery following
COVID-19, with more than 250 recruited and
trained in 2022-23. This has resulted in a net
increase of 186 driving examiners. We have
increased capacity to deliver as many tests
as we can. We delivered more than 580,000
additional tests in the last year.’
Now I’ve a bone to pick here. The same
DVSA told the Westminster Select
Committee on Transport (see the report on
page 20) that the rate of attrition for
examiners was 15 a month. It’s a figure that
was also quoted to the NASP meeting. 15 a
month is 180 a year - take that off the 250
recruited and trained in 2022-23 and you are
left with 70 new examiners at the coalface. If
that 15 a month is a constant, since the
beginning of the recovery – and we’re taking
that as August 2021 – to today is 24 months.
Multiplying 24 by 15 gives us 360 examiners
leaving the show ... or just 100 fewer than the
460 recruited.
We’re not saying anyone is being
deliberately off here. It could be that the
figures are made hard to follow by covering
different starting dates, so it’s hard to pin
down exactly how many new examiners
there are, but the fact is the information
doesn’t sit well with that offered to NASP or
the MPs.
It’s probably not a big point but it does
mean the headline figure of recruiting
400-odd examiners in no way means we
have that many extra boots on the ground,
and the newcomers don’t deliver a massive
dent in the L-test waiting times.
At eight tests a day, five days a week,
examiners will deliver 40 tests. Multiply that
by 47, and you have just shy of 2,000 extra
tests per year per new examiner. When you
consider that we have a backlog of 500,000-
600,000 tests, you can see why the DVSA
needs that 400-odd examiners to be net of
leavers, rather than a gross figure.
Ignoring the disaster that is waiting times,
16 NEWSLINK n AUGUST 2023