Is there a shortage of driving instructors in the UK?

At the end of March 2026 there were 44,429 approved driving instructors (ADIs) on the DVSA register in Great Britain, plus 5,742 trainee licence holders (DVSA table INS0103). Two years earlier the figures were 40,984 and 4,043.

That is not what a shortage looks like. An earlier version of this post said the register had fallen below 36,000 and was still shrinking. That was wrong, and we have rewritten the post from DVSA's own data.

Learners do still wait: for a test, and sometimes for an instructor with a free slot. Most of the reasons show up in the test figures rather than the instructor count.

What the ADI register shows

DVSA publishes a count of ADIs on the register for the end of each month. These are the figures at the end of March each year (INS0101 to 2025, INS0103 for 2026):

The register did shrink through the 2010s. It hit its low point of 38,252 in April 2021 and has grown every year since. The March 2026 count is the highest month-end figure since April 2013.

DVSA's annual report for 2025 to 2026 says the same thing in words: "The ADI register continued to grow in 2025 to 2026, with the number of qualified ADIs now exceeding 44,000 on the register and a further 5,500 trainee licence holders."

These are Great Britain figures. Northern Ireland runs its own qualification process and is not included.

Applications to qualify have more than doubled

More people are trying to qualify than at any point in the INS0101 series, which starts in 2011:

• Applications to start qualifying: 7,656 in 2018/19, 19,207 in 2024/25 (INS0101). DVSA received "over 20,000" in 2025/26 (annual report).
• Trainee licences issued: 3,870 in 2018/19, 10,626 in 2024/25 (INS0101).
• Part 3 tests passed: 2,569 in 2018/19, 3,784 in 2025/26 (DVSA table DRT521C).

DVSA's Director of Enforcement put the rise in applications at 152% since 2018/19. Part 3 has the lowest pass rate of the three: 13,606 Part 3 tests were taken in 2025/26 and 27.8% were passes.

So why do learners still wait?

The driving test is the bottleneck

In August 2026 the median wait from booking a car test to taking it was 11.1 weeks, and the first week with at least 10% of test appointments still free to book was 20 weeks away (DVSA table DRT121G).

DVSA's annual report is blunt about why: "demand for driving tests continued to exceed capacity". Its target of a 7-week wait now has "No date set", and it estimates that an extra 450,000 to 500,000 tests above normal capacity are needed over the next 18 months to get waits back to target. The report says the National Audit Office's investigation highlighted "workforce capacity, booking system abuse, demand forecasting and the impact of the pandemic". Instructor numbers are not on that list.

Examiner numbers are rising. DVSA had 1,605 full-time equivalent examiners able to test in August 2026, 160 more than a year earlier and its highest capacity since November 2017.

For an instructor, a long test wait holds a pupil in the diary for longer. A pupil who is ready in March but can't test until July still needs lessons to stay sharp, and that slot is not free for a new learner.

Test demand has grown faster than the register

DVSA carried out 1,664,219 car driving tests in 2018/19 and 1,998,621 in 2025/26 (DRT121A), a rise of 20%. Over the same years the register grew by 12%, from 39,710 to 44,429. That works out at roughly 42 car tests per registered ADI in 2018/19 and 45 in 2025/26 (our calculation from the two tables).

In the 12 months to August 2026, DVSA carried out more than 2.13 million car tests, its highest rolling 12-month total on record. The car test pass rate was 50.0% in 2025/26, so about half of all tests end in a fail, which means more lessons and another booking.

Automatic demand has more than tripled

DVSA carried out 589,483 automatic car tests in 2025/26, 29.5% of all car tests. In 2018/19 it was 185,043, or 11.1% (DRT122E and DRT121A, our calculation). An instructor who holds an automatic-only licence can only teach in an automatic (GOV.UK), and DVSA does not publish how many ADIs teach in automatics. If a learner says there are no instructors, check whether they mean no automatic instructors. Our post on finding a female automatic instructor covers the tightest version of that search.

A register count is not a diary count

The register counts people who hold an ADI certificate. DVSA does not publish how many of them teach full time, part time or hardly at all, and we could not find any official figure for how long learners wait to find an instructor. Local gaps can exist inside a growing national total. No official data measures them.

What it means for learners

• Start looking for an instructor before you want to start lessons, and ask to join a waiting list if they are full.
• Search more than one way. Our instructor marketplace searches by postcode and filters by manual or automatic and by instructor gender.
• Don't book your test until you are ready. You now get 2 booking changes, and a fail puts you back in the queue.
• Check current waits at your centre with our driving test waiting times tool. The waiting times guide explains the numbers.

What it means if you want to become an instructor

The old pitch went: there's a shortage, so you'll have a full diary from day one. The numbers don't support it. The register grew by 2,028 in the year to March 2026, and 5,742 people held trainee licences at the same time.

The work is there: test volumes are at record levels and about half of all tests end in a fail. But you will be competing for pupils, and the qualification is hard: in 2025/26 the pass rates were 37.0% for Part 1, 55.3% for Part 2 and 27.8% for Part 3 (DVSA tables DRT511A, DRT521A and DRT521C).

Our guides on how hard it is to qualify and whether 2026 is a good time to start go through both sides. If you are weighing up a franchise, the franchise cost calculator and our franchise vs independent comparison show what the weekly fee does to your take-home.

To run your own numbers before you start, try the earnings calculator, or read the become an instructor guide for the full qualification process.