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 current bulletins to the driving force and rider coaching trade.
Learn the letter beneath.
Good Afternoon
As the biggest consultant physique for skilled driver and rider trainers within the UK, and the largest stakeholder within the career (for reference our membership is thrice the dimensions of the variety of instructors working for the nationwide driving faculties mixed, and a number of other occasions the membership dimension of another consultant physique for working driving instructors) my members are left in a state of shock and frustration at at present’s bulletins, and the style by which they’ve been introduced.
To speak such a major change which impacts the function of licenced, fee-paying professionals, whose regulated function is to help the gatekeeping of pupils from Learner to licenced street person, 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 possible resultant choice making – with even the principle trade stakeholder our bodies, which might on the very least have helped you pinpoint among 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 trade steering group (the Nationwide Associations Strategic Partnership), we meet usually with DVSA senior administration to debate main coverage and technique developments, and to offer invaluable insights on how the company’s decision-making will hit, and be felt, on the bottom. We additionally usually assist finesse company communications, significantly on delicate issues. In the previous few conferences for the reason that session closed, we’ve been asking what the response has been, what the outcomes appear to be, 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 skilled) skilled driver coaching neighborhood, and what selections does it appear possible 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 had been made to maintain the nationwide associations knowledgeable and consulted, and to permit for discussions to happen that might have delivered invaluable insights in that decision-making course of, and the following communication of these selections. 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 take a look at supply fiasco amongst different DVSA service supply challenges, has been poor thus 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) shouldn’t be, within the eyes of the driving force coaching career, meaningfully participating with the trade 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 take a look at supply and the dearth of actual affect of the a lot lauded 7 Level Plan (six months after launch of which, take a look at ready occasions continued to rise), in addition to the dearth of efficient stakeholder engagement with the trade, the consequence was to not even trouble to reply to these considerations instantly however to ship Loveday Ryder to inform us off for escalating these considerations 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 counsel 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 critical 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 come back and converse to over 200 working driving instructors at our Nationwide Convention on fifth December and clarify why you suppose the choices made at present, and the communication thereof, are such a nicely thought-out strategy.
Finest needs
Carly Brookfield
DIA Chief Govt
