Mr Sinclair said the same situation was being repeated at test centres across the UK.<\/p>\n
“Because of the national backlog, cancellation apps have turned booking a test into a finger on the buzzer situation, where whoever grabs the slot gets it first, regardless of location,” he said. <\/p>\n
“Tests here are often taken by people travelling long distances, many of whom aren’t familiar with the area.”<\/p>\n
“Local instructors aren’t allowing this to happen. Myself and my colleagues simply can’t and won’t take candidates to test if they’re unprepared or unfamiliar with the area.”<\/p>\n
Mr Sinclair said he sympathised with people being in a desperate situation because of the backlog.<\/p>\n
He said that when a candidate fails a driving tests they often have to wait months for another opportunity, which can have an affect on employment opportunities.<\/p>\n
“For some pupils, the increased waiting times can increase anxiety, cause loss of confidence and frustration,” Mr Sinclair said – as well as the financial pressures.<\/p>\n
According to the NAO report, most driving test centres in Scotland still have waiting times of more than five months despite efforts to reduce the backlog.<\/p>\n
It found that most of Scotland’s 24 permanent centres had waits of between 19 and 24 weeks.<\/p>\n
Just two Scottish centres – Dumfries and Ayr – had average waits of six weeks and under.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Mr Sinclair said the same situation was being repeated at test centres across the UK. “Because of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":320517,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[49,50,51,47,52,48],"class_list":["post-320516","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-headlines","tag-news","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320516","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=320516"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/320516\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/320517"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=320516"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=320516"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=320516"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}