DVSA’s issued Labour MPs with some nice ready made social media assets this week which attribute the agency’s success in unlocking an extra 10,000 tests a month to recruiting new examiners. But how successful, in real terms, has examiner recruitment been? Read more for a deeper dive into examiner recruitment challenges.
The underlying examiner workforce problem is well documented. The National Audit Office found that, despite 19 recruitment campaigns, DVSA had only 83 more examiners in place in 2025 than in 2021, against an ambition to add 400. It highlighted high exit rates, with perceived uncompetitive pay and safety concerns among the factors contributing to high attrition rates in both the trainee examiner and existing examiner pool. In September 2025, DVSA said it had recruited and trained 271 examiners since July 2024 who were in post and delivering tests, while 80 remained in training, 83 were booked on future courses and 66 had received offers. It also acknowledged that existing examiners were continuing to leave. The agency has previously admitted a severe driving examiner attrition rate of roughly 14%—about double the civil service average. This high turnover has continually wiped out recruitment gains.
By February this year, the workforce had risen to 1,556 full-time-equivalent examiners – 108 more than a year earlier – according to figures given in Parliament.
Fast forward, DVSA have more recently claimed that examiner numbers are at their highest level since 2019 and that they’re close to a quarter of a million additional car tests being delivered between June 2025 and May 2026, compared with the previous 12 months. Granted, these are significant gains. They do not, however, remove the need to account for the gap between recruitment, successful training and productive deployment and examiner attrition.
The Times succinctly summarised some of the problems in an article in May this year as ‘Red tape, poor pay and dangerous learners mean only 3 per cent of applicants qualify to grill new drivers’.
On social media ADIs responded to one Labour MPs claims of success in examiner recruitment this week with cynicism:
Just a play on numbers, so you got an extra 62 examiners?
ADI, Devon
This is so far from the truth or reality it’s astonishing!
Here in the south west departing examiners have far outnumbered the recruitment drive since the pandemic.
ADI, South West England
What you haven’t said is the amount of driving examiners that the DVSA haven’t been able to retain. You’ve lost nearly that amount due to poor salary and shocking contracts.
The DVSA are an absolute shambles. Get rid of the top tier management and put in people who know what they are doing and who are in the driving instruction industry.
The problem is recruitment and retention. That 10,000 sounds big, BUT, before holidays, sickness, etc. it equates to around 60(ish) examiners across the whole nation.
ADI, North East
What’s more worrying? Even some of those that have been recruited and trained, haven’t yet been deployed…see our article on that here.
Read the full DIA Special Report
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Read the full series:
Questions over net new examiner numbers
New examiners waiting to be deployed while pupils wait for tests
Locked out and left waiting: pupils blocked by DVSA’s bot protection
A crackdown with unintended consequences?
Selective social media, missing updates and an invisible new CEO
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One Response
We Talk and Talk and Talk.. This has been going on for 5 years… keep Talking That’s what politicians do and government industries. Say Nothing until you give us positive solutions..