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 motive force and rider coaching trade.
Learn the letter under.
Good Afternoon
As the most important 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 scale of the variety of instructors working for the nationwide driving faculties mixed, and a number of other occasions the membership measurement of every other consultant physique for working driving instructors) my members are left in a state of shock and frustration at right now’s bulletins, and the style through which they’ve been introduced.
To speak such a big change which impacts the position of licenced, fee-paying professionals, whose regulated position 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 possible resultant determination 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 determination presents for working driving instructors and wider street security, is staggering.
As a significant stakeholder, and alongside colleagues within the trade steering group (the Nationwide Associations Strategic Partnership), we meet repeatedly with DVSA senior administration to debate main coverage and technique developments, and to provide beneficial insights on how the company’s decision-making will hit, and be felt, on the bottom. We additionally repeatedly assist finesse company communications, significantly on delicate issues. In the previous couple of conferences because the session closed, we’ve got 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 professional) skilled driver coaching neighborhood, and what choices does it appear possible the session will set off. No actual suggestions has been given, aside 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 would have delivered beneficial 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 right now.
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 number 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) is just not, within the eyes of the motive force coaching career, meaningfully partaking 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 shortage of actual impression 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 shortage of efficient stakeholder engagement with the trade, the consequence was to not even trouble to reply to these considerations immediately 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 companies.
I’d 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 would work higher and the selections being made at the moment that would 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 selections made right now, and the communication thereof, are such a effectively thought-out strategy.
Finest needs
Carly Brookfield
DIA Chief Government
