Government tightens driving test bookings to stop bot resales

Learner drivers are now the only people allowed to book and manage a car driving test, in a crackdown meant to stop third parties from using automated bots to grab scarce appointments and resell them at inflated prices.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency said the change is designed to make the system fairer for genuine learners after record waiting times and a growing backlog. It comes alongside a staged tightening of the booking rules. The number of allowed changes to a booking was cut from six to two on 31 March 2026, and from 9 June 2026 learners will be able to move a test only to one of the three nearest driving test centres.

The official fee has not changed. A practical car driving test still costs £62 on weekdays and £75 on evenings, weekends and bank holidays, and the agency says learners should only ever pay that fee. Third parties, including instructors and unofficial booking services, can no longer book a test for someone else, and changing, swapping or cancelling a test on another person’s behalf is now also a breach of the booking terms and conditions.

The policy follows years of frustration over what officials described as a secondary market in test bookings, where cancellation-finder services use automated software to snap up appointments faster than human users. The DVSA first publicly explained the problem in June 2023, saying bots could search and reserve slots faster than people and then resell them at inflated prices. The new rules apply only to car driving tests, not theory tests or other driving test categories.

Ministers say the clampdown sits alongside efforts to increase supply. They said 1.95 million tests were delivered in the previous year, with more than 158,000 extra tests delivered between June 2025 and March 2026. Military driving examiners have also been brought in to help boost capacity, and driving examiner numbers are at their highest level since 2018.

The government’s April 2025 plan set a target of at least 10,000 extra tests a month and promised to cut waiting times to seven weeks by summer 2026. In the 2025 consultation that shaped the new booking rules, the government received 102,224 responses plus 68 by email. It removed 8,803 automated bot responses, leaving 93,421 analysed, and said 18 responses came from businesses offering unofficial test-booking or cancellation-finder services.