Penzance Driving Tests

​Pupils and Instructors of Penwith are calling for the DVSA to reopen Penzance Driving Test Centre immediately to fully operational capacity with at least two full time examiners, 5 days per week. This is the only route to help combat the phenomenal backlog of Driving Tests.

For 15 months now, Penzance Driving Test Centre has not opened to capacity for candidates to undertake Driving Tests. As a result of this, Driving tests have been forced to take place in Camborne Driving Test Centre, 17 miles away. The impact of this has been immense.

Many of the pupils have undertaken driving lessons in West Penwith and been forced to perform under test conditions in a location unfamiliar to them.it is very much not a case of 'if a student can drive they can drive anywhere and so they don’t need to do the lessons in Camborne just the test'. 

• The two areas are very different and the student will be faced with challenges on their test that they may never have experienced in their lessons before, ie. double mini roundabouts, traffic light controlled crossroads, crossing dual carriageways. This case is not the same as learning in a city where one city is like the rest, rural areas are very different.
  
• Pupils are having to pay out additional lesson time in order to travel to and from the new Test location. 
• Instructors have had to reduce their pupil capacity in order to create more time for candidates to practice in Camborne. 
• Instructors are also having to cancel lessons due to being held up in the additional travel and traffic to and from Camborne.

There is currently an approximate 4 month waiting list for Driving Tests in Penzance, with approximately only 40 new dates released each month. At present, Penzance Driving Test Centre is open only 2 days per week, with one Examiner conducting only a handful of tests between 08.00 and 15.00. If an examiner is ill, the day's tests are cancelled and students then have additional weeks of delay added to an already frustrating waiting time.

​Penzance Driving Test Centre has the full capabilities of running parallel Tests 5 days a week just as it did before the Pandemic. The DVSA however are not providing enough Driving Examiner cover in Penzance, despite a high number of Examiners conducting tests in Camborne.