An uptick in immigration has been blamed for the delay to driving tests. But that's not the full picture.

A surge in net migration has been widely blamed for causing a substantial backlog to driving tests in the UK right now – but that’s actually the full picture.

Officials from the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) told the transport secretary Heidi Alexander over the weekend that the unprecedented surge in immigration since 2021 is to blame for the backlog.

Learners are currently waiting up to six months to take a test, compared to just over six weeks in 2018-2019.

That’s far from the DVSA’s target wait time of seven weeks.

At the end of August, there were 644,398 future tests waiting to be booked, which is almost three times higher than the 219,786 total recorded in February 2020.

According to minutes released via a Freedom of Information request, the cabinet minister was urged to consider “immigration options” and “minimum learning periods” by transport officials.

But, as the government pointed out, there are multiple factors playing into the problems around booking a........

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