The Driving Standards Agency (DSA) has new powers to immediately suspend a driving instructor who poses a threat to learners or other road users.
Current law allows the DSA to suspend an instructor but it takes 45 days to come into effect during which time the instructor can still give driving instruction. The new powers will remove instructors from the registrar immediately. The DSA currently employs around 2,000 driving examiners. In 2008/2009 the DSA did 1.72 million practical car tests, 84,000 vocational tests and 105,000 motorcycle tests. 1.5 million theory tests were carried out.