On Wednesday, 12 November 2025, Carly Brookfield despatched a letter to ministers Lilian Greenwood, Heidi Alexander and Richard Holden expressing the shock and frustration on the latest bulletins to the driving force and rider coaching business.
Learn the letter under.
Good Afternoon
As the biggest consultant physique for skilled driver and rider trainers within the UK, and the most important stakeholder within the career (for reference our membership is 3 times the dimensions of the variety of instructors working for the nationwide driving faculties mixed, and several other occasions the membership measurement of some other consultant physique for working driving instructors) my members are left in a state of shock and frustration at at present’s bulletins, and the way by which they’ve been introduced.
To speak such a big change which impacts the function of licenced, fee-paying professionals, whose regulated function is to assist the gatekeeping of pupils from Learner to licenced street consumer, and largely base it on the opinion of Learners, novice drivers (and different inexpert and inexperienced non-driver schooling stakeholders like Mum and Dad), with out additional dialogue of that session – and any probably resultant choice making – with even the primary business stakeholder our bodies, which might on the very least have helped you pinpoint a number of the very actual impacts this choice presents for working driving instructors and wider street security, is staggering.
As a serious stakeholder, and alongside colleagues within the business steering group (the Nationwide Associations Strategic Partnership), we meet often with DVSA senior administration to debate main coverage and technique developments, and to present helpful insights on how the company’s decision-making will hit, and be felt, on the bottom. We additionally often assist finesse company communications, significantly on delicate issues. In the previous few conferences because the session closed, we now have been asking what the response has been, what the outcomes seem like, how you’ll steadiness the affect of a bigger mass of responses from members of the general public with responses from the a lot smaller (however arguably extra knowledgeable) skilled driver coaching neighborhood, and what choices does it appear probably the session will set off. No actual suggestions has been given, apart from on the variety of responses to the session (to which the problem was made on steadiness and proportionality in decision-making). Nevertheless, undertakings have been made to maintain the nationwide associations knowledgeable and consulted, and to permit for discussions to happen that might have delivered helpful insights in that decision-making course of, and the following communication of these choices. However that didn’t occur, and we discovered that out alongside everybody else at present.
The engagement of this administration’s Ministers with the driving teacher career, as you preside over a check supply fiasco amongst different DVSA service supply challenges, has been poor so far, at greatest (a couple of conferences with street security charities and a handful of driving instructors in your native constituencies, or turning as much as a industrial expo to gladhand for half an hour) isn’t, within the eyes of the driving force coaching career, meaningfully participating with the business on the intense challenges it faces with driver coaching, testing and licensing – and the broader points in driver schooling and street security.
After giving proof on the Transport Choose Committee in December, and writing to each of you in April in regards to the ongoing points with check supply and the dearth of actual affect of the a lot lauded 7 Level Plan (six months after launch of which, check ready occasions continued to rise), in addition to the dearth of efficient stakeholder engagement with the business, the consequence was to not even trouble to reply to these issues straight however to ship Loveday Ryder to inform us off for escalating these issues to Ministers within the first place, not the best instance of stakeholder communications I’ve seen in over 25 years in senior communications roles throughout a number of industries…together with Authorities businesses.
I might recommend that now’s the time for efficient ministerial engagement with the official nationwide our bodies representing these on the coalface of driver schooling, to permit for a severe dialogue in regards to the points, the options that might work higher and the choices being made at the moment that might do extra hurt than good.
You’re additionally welcome to return and converse to over 200 working driving instructors at our Nationwide Convention on fifth December and clarify why you assume the choices made at present, and the communication thereof, are such a effectively thought-out method.
Greatest needs
Carly Brookfield
DIA Chief Govt
