DRIVETIME UK Driver Training

A reflective log is like keeping a personal diary where you jot down what you’ve been up to, what you’re thinking and how you’re feeling. It’s a great way to sort through your experiences and learn from them. You go through the event, think about it carefully, figure out what it means and then plan what you’ll do next to get better. This helps you grow both personally and professionally. You’ll want to include what happened, how you felt, link it to what you’ve learned and think about what you can do differently next time.

What it is:
- A learning diary or journal that helps you remember and grow from what you’ve learned.
- A record of your own experiences, what you’ve noticed and how you’ve felt about something specific or a learning period.
- A way to improve yourself and reach your career goals, especially when you’re on a work placement or taking a course.
How it helps:
- Helps you learn: It helps you understand how you learn, see the link between what you’ve learned in theory and what you do in real life and turn tough experiences into plans to get better.
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- Encourages thinking critically: It makes you look at events and how you’re doing more closely, not just telling the story but also figuring out what went wrong and what you can do to fix it.
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- Promotes self-awareness: It lets you look at your own feelings, what’s stopping you and what you can do to get better.

I passed my test today. I would highly recommend tony as he is patient, knowledgable and an overall brilliant instructor. i couldn’t have done it without him. Hannah

Massive congratulations to Hannah Garside on passing her driving test at Rochdale test centre today after training with Tony
Comment from the examiner “lovely drive”
Excellent drive Hannah well done 🚗🚗🚗

Hello and welcome to our driving school! We offer a wide range of driving lessons in Rochdale and the nearby towns, all at competitive prices.

We are very proud of our efficient and professional service. Our driving lessons are designed to meet the unique needs of each learner, and we deliver them with patience and professionalism.

All our driving instructors are experienced, fully qualified DSA Approved instructors.

We know that driving tests, or more importantly, booking them is a hot topic for you. This follows the recent changes which came into force on how tests can be booked.

The new booking platform we are working on will not create more tests. However, it will make the process of booking a test much more user-focused.

We last updated you about the progress of the Driver Services Platform (DSP) project back in September 2025 when we brought Kainos onboard to build the new system.

A lot has happened in the last 10 months.

A service built around its users, for its users

When we welcomed Kainos to the team last year, they joined us with a very clear goal: to build a new system to book and schedule car tests, designed for those who use it.

To build a system for a user, the first thing to do is to understand them. So, the team from Kainos immersed themselves in talking to people who use the current service the most. Externally, this is predominantly learner drivers.

Understanding how they want the service to work for them is key. How do they search for tests? What parameters do they use? Possibly more importantly, what in the current system could be improved?

But are the users of the new system just external?

Absolutely not! Within DVSA there are teams of people who use the current booking system every day and will need to do the same with the new version.

For example:

our deployment team makes sure that there are examiners in the right place to do tests
the customer service team uses the system to help handle calls they get every day from learner drivers to help book and manage their test
These are just a couple of examples - the full list is much longer.

Collecting the research from each audience is just the start of the process.

The next challenge is to interpret what the information is saying and turn the answers into a service that delivers what users have asked for.

Working with existing systems

As well as making a system that works for our users, Kainos also needs to make sure it will work alongside current systems used when booking a driving test. This is no mean feat as among other things the system needs to:

talk to DVLA systems to check users’ entitlements
check the theory test system to show the correct test has been completed
work with the payment system to pay for the test
send the details to the examiner’s iPad ahead of the test
if the test is successful, send the results to DVLA so that a license can be created.
Creating something that can integrate with so many systems is achievable in principle, but the real test comes when we see it in action in a real scenario.

A pilot to test the principle

Before we roll out the system more widely, we need to check that it works on a much smaller scale. In this case, one day of testing for one driving examiner at one driving test centre.

We are choosing to start small on purpose. If something does not work as expected, we want to find out when the impact is limited to a handful of people — not thousands. The test centre we are using for the pilot is Durham. We have spoken to local approved driving instructors (ADIs) to find some of their pupils who are ready to take their test and be part of the pilot.

After the pilot has run we will share the outcomes with you and update you on the next steps.

Building on small steps

The new service will be built in small stages. This allows us to keep control of the development while testing smaller pieces of the system separately to make sure they all work before putting them together. This approach prevents making large changes where it is more difficult to spot the part that goes wrong if there’s a problem.

This approach of building and testing in small iterations is fundamental to how we are working. It means we can see the full impact of each change before we make the next one, and it means we are not committing to large-scale implementation before we know the system is ready.

We plan to run further small testing events towards the end of the year. This will help us to work out the best way build and introduce the new system.

After the pilot has run we will share the outcomes with you and update on the next steps.

Hello and welcome to our driving school! We have a variety of driving lessons available in Rochdale and the surrounding areas, all at prices that are fair and competitive.

We are very proud of our efficient and professional service.

Our driving lessons are tailored to the individual needs of each learner, and we deliver them with patience and professionalism.

All our driving instructors are experienced, fully qualified DVSA Approved instructors.

I passed my test with Tony first time from drivetime UK. I recommend Tony to anybody who wants to learn to drive. He has been absolutely brilliant and explains all aspects with great detail, couldn't have done it without him. Katie

Here we go again……
Massive congratulations to Katie Pollitt on passing her driving test today at Rochdale test centre at her first attempt with only 1 driver fault!!!
Comment from the examiner “very enjoyable drive”
Fantastic drive Katie well done 🚗🚗🚗🚗