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 motive force and rider coaching business.
Learn the letter beneath.
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 a number of other instances the membership dimension of some other consultant physique for working driving instructors) my members are left in a state of shock and frustration at as we speak’s bulletins, and the way wherein 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 highway consumer, and largely base it on the opinion of Learners, novice drivers (and different inexpert and inexperienced non-driver training stakeholders like Mum and Dad), with out additional dialogue of that session – and any probably resultant choice making – with even the principle business 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 highway security, is staggering.
As a significant stakeholder, and alongside colleagues within the business steering group (the Nationwide Associations Strategic Partnership), we meet usually with DVSA senior administration to debate main coverage and technique developments, and to offer worthwhile 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 have now been asking what the response has been, what the outcomes appear like, how you’ll stability 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 stability and proportionality in decision-making). Nonetheless, undertakings have been made to maintain the nationwide associations knowledgeable and consulted, and to permit for discussions to happen that might have delivered worthwhile 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 as we speak.
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 up to now, at greatest (a number of conferences with highway 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 motive force coaching career, meaningfully partaking with the business on the intense challenges it faces with driver coaching, testing and licensing – and the broader points in driver training and highway 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 instances continued to rise), in addition to the shortage of efficient stakeholder engagement with the business, 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’d counsel that now could be the time for efficient ministerial engagement with the official nationwide our bodies representing these on the coalface of driver training, to permit for a severe dialogue in regards to the points, the options that might work higher and the choices being made at present that might do extra hurt than good.
You’re additionally welcome to return and communicate to over 200 working driving instructors at our Nationwide Convention on fifth December and clarify why you suppose the choices made as we speak, and the communication thereof, are such a properly thought-out strategy.
Greatest needs
Carly Brookfield
DIA Chief Government
