Covid Driving Lesson Backlog – Intensive Courses Thatcham and Newbury

It is currently impossible to see just how much Covid-19 has affected normal life, not just for us in Newbury and Thatcham, but on a global scale. Its effect on learners is being noticed now as we have recently come out of lockdown and people have been able to take their driving tests since last April. While the ability to take both lessons and tests has resumed, Zain Ahmad said in May that he had been turned away by roughly 50 instructors because driving schools said that their backlogs and waiting lists were so vast. Others have complained that the DVSA cancelled their test date without warning. It also came out this month that the waiting list for theory tests in Scotland has become so extensive that most people are unable to take the test until September, which is about four times the wait that those in England and Wales are expecting.

The delays are being blamed on distancing safety measures put in place to reduce the spread of Covid – with the measures in place people are simply not allowed in the testing rooms at the volumes that were permitted pre-covid. The chair of Approved Driving Instructors National Joint Council, Lynne Barrie has said that this unprecedented backlog has caused a huge amount of stress and pressure on for instructors, who of course would like business to continue as normal. It also puts a strain on those wishing to take or give intensive driving courses as many instructors are spread thin with the shear amount of learners already taking lessons.