Plans for a crackdown on motorists who’ve held provisional licences for years and sometimes decades have been delayed over fears of a knock-on effect on waiting lists for driving tests, reports Breaking News.
A detailed briefing from the Department of Transport said any dramatic change on how many learner permits a person could hold was likely to lead to “a surge of applications”.
Officials warned this would end up “causing extra stress on the already overburdened testing system”, according to records they released.
The briefing added: “That is why it is so important for the testing capacity to get back to service level agreements [a ten-week maximum wait] before the changes can be announced,” reports Breaking News.
A crackdown on drivers who have had provisional licenses for years, even decades, has been planned, but plans have been postponed due to concerns that it will negatively impact drivers waiting to take driving exams.
Any significant modification to the maximum number of learner permits an individual might possess would probably result in “a surge of applications,” according to a thorough briefing from the Department of Transport.
Records they made public show that officials expressed concern that this would wind up “causing extra stress on the already overburdened testing system,” reports Breaking News.
“For this reason, it is crucial that the testing capacity return to service level agreements [a ten-week maximum wait] before the changes can be announced,” the briefing continued.
An additional 327 drivers had provisional licenses issued in 1995; of these, 124 never took a driving test throughout a fifteen-year span.
Additional learner licenses with over twenty years of expiration date were 414 from 1996, 463 from 1997, and 594 from 1998, reports Breaking News.
It was described as “a very complex project” in a different May document on the system’s proposed modifications, which also involved the implementation of new regulations.
It said: “System changes are required in many areas of the RSA and some systems identified would not be able to cater for the change and a new system may not be in place for up to two years,” reports Breaking News.
Following a session with “stakeholders,” a January document described the scope of the issues at hand.
Driver education programs, according to the statement, were “past extended [on] Microsoft support.”
The document also said that manual record updating would be required due to issues with “fringe cases,” in which an individual had been, for instance, rejected.
It added: “Full and accurate costs cannot be established until change requests have been issued and responded to by contractors. Caution advised regarding system rule complexity and build effort and future maintainability. This is a significant project for the RSA requiring substantial budget and resourcing,” reports Breaking News.
When asked about their plans, a Department of Transport official stated that they were determined to deal with drivers who drive for extended periods of time while holding a learner permit.
He said: “An approach to address this issue has been agreed with the RSA, and discussions concerning the implementation of the planned approach are ongoing. The intention is to proceed when the driver testing backlog is resolved. The driver testing service is currently facing unprecedented demand, with the number of applications for tests rising by 23% year-on-year,” reports Breaking News.
The spokesperson went on to say that in an effort to lower test waiting times down below the desired level of ten weeks, a significant number of additional driving testers had been employed both this year and last.
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