How Will Intensive Driving Courses Work In 2021?

Intensive driving courses are back! The lockdown is coming to an end, but how will intensive driving courses work in the era post lockdown 3.0?

This is a very good question. One that is complex, uncertain and of course rife with uncertain times. One thing is for sure, here at LPOD HQ – things have got busy over the past few weeks and months.

Intensives driving courses may boom in the post lockdown, and they may not! Who knows what the market will determine. Here are some of the complexities to determine when it comes to the reboot of the industry!

Lack of Driving Test Appointments

OK – so you are either a pupil with a driving test, or you are a pupil without one. Whichever the case, the sheer fact that you have an appointment puts you in a favourable position against pupils who do not, to some degree.

During the pandemic, the DVSA reduced the testing capacity to 5-6 appointments a day, as opposed to the regular 7 appointments each day. This, in turn, meant that 1/7th of all testing appointments were lost when compared to pre-pandemic times.

Add into the equation that the whole testing market was shut for approximately 8 months. Since then, another 800,000 students have turned 17, millions have lost jobs and pupils living in remote areas needed to get driving to find work.

The sheer volume of demand has skyrocketed which has outstripped the supply of driving instructors available for pupils. Pupils are in one of two camps:

Pupil A: I have a test but no driving instructor

Pupil B: I have a driving instructor but no test

Panic Buying Tests

The bigger issue arose last September. Once the DVSA announced that the booking system was going to be open for the general public, the fury online crashed the website within 10 minutes of being live. Fast forward another week – a queue system was introduced.

With a set number of tests released at interval periods the queue system amassed nearly 250,000 eager students within a matter of minutes. Pot luck if you were in the top 10,000 lucky waiting clients.

Every week the DVSA released a set amount of driving tests. The same thing happened, and again, the queue system was inundated with the sheer volume of learner drivers hoping to book their driving test.

Intensive driving courses were booked in a flurry – with a wide variety of pupils. Some with driving test appointments, and a lot without.

Pupils Forced To Move Appointments Back

Students with a driving test appointment but indeed without a driving instructor, were forced to go online and reschedule their appointments, if they were able to get an appointment a few months back, enabling them to find a driving instructor.

The DVSA do not release driving test appointments for months on end, they hold appointments back and release them in a timely manner, this is due to various reasons.

Many students would either succumb to attending their appointment with the “school of mum and dad” or forfeiting their test appointment opportunity altogether and subsequently their fee. Of course, the panic of ‘booking’ a driving test appointment without a plan, meant that other pupils with a plan forgone an opportunity to pass their driving test.

The Chaos of The Industry

Once November’s lockdown was announced – the industry spiralled out of control. November’s test appointments were moved to 2021, and the lucky students now in the tier 2 or 3 system were able to take their test. Alas, if their instructor lived in a tier 4 system – they legally weren’t allowed to help or work!

This continued towards the end of December when the whole of the UK entered a national lockdown. Many driving instructors were forced into other jobs, opting to retire early, or sadly victims of the pandemic and sadly lost their lives. I know personally, an old colleague in Northampton who died in December.

Lockdown 3.0

Boris Johnson put the country back into a national lockdown. But due to the new variants and the heightened spread of the new strain, the DVSA announced that keyworker testing was not an option this time around,  unlike it was allowed in the first lockdown.

Driving test dates were rescheduled a few weeks at a time. January tests soon become April, and so on, and so forth. The DVSA are still going through the rescheduling of all the booked tests during the pandemic. Some student’s tests have been rebooked for August 2021.

DVSA’s Rescue Plan

As part of the DVSA’s rescue plan, a UK wide recruitment of examiners was introduced in January. Job applications closed on March 1st, where they received 5,000 applications for a two-year fixed contract. Of course, it takes time to interview, train and place new examiners into a role.

The two-year fixed contract is to cover the post-pandemic recovery strategy. But how does this affect intensive driving courses?

The Challenges of Intensive Driving Courses

Of course, being an intensive driving course company we are facing unprecedented enquiries with students unsure of how the intensive driving courses will work and how the courses will be managed.

Of course, there are multiple factors:

1. Pupils with test and without driving instructor
2. Pupils with instructor awaiting to book a practical test

The pupils booked onto a course prior to lockdown 3.0 are possibly the luckier ones. Whether part way through their training, they have an instructor, they have a rescheduled test date and it is simply a waiting game for the driving test to happen.

For students who booked early in the year, they will be placed with an instructor ready to be provisionally booked into the instructor’s diary. Of course, no intensive driving course can be seamless. Many instructors are splitting courses in two so that the pupil is part ready, and in a better position for a driving test cancellation should one arise.

However, shorter courses are harder to arrange without a test date. These types of students tend to be experienced drivers just trying to pass their test.

With the typical wait times for placement with an instructor being in excess of 3 months – planning is crucial! Early planning is crucial for the smooth running of any students course. It appears the intensive market is needed, but possibly the hardest hit in the driver training market. But where there is a problem, there is a new plan!

If you are thinking of booking an intensive driving course, plan early, book ahead of time, and keep in contact with your driving instructor. We wish everyone the best of luck with your journey of learning to drive.

LPOD Team