Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency failed to properly investigate allegations about a driving examiner

What happened

Mr W, who is a driving instructor, visited the local test centre, with one of his pupils to prepare for a driving test. Mr W alleged that the driving examiner used inappropriate language and raised his voice. Mr W complained to DVSA, who spoke to the driving examiner, but he refuted the allegations.

Mr W escalated the complaint to the Independent Complaints Assessor (ICA) which asked DVSA to interview Mr W's pupil as he had witnessed the events. DVSA wrote to Mr W's pupil who wrote a statement, with the help of Mr W. The ICA decided that it could not reach a view on what the examiner had done, because Mr W had helped his pupil prepare the statement, and did not uphold the complaint. ICA found that DVSA had not properly investigated the complaint as it did not interview the pupil at the time of the original complaint.

Mr W remained unhappy. He wanted DVSA to apologise and an assurance that it would handle complaints better in the future.

What we found

We could not reach a view on the driving examiner's actions because there was no independent evidence we could rely on.

DVSA failed to properly investigate Mr W's complaint, and did not take account of all the potential evidence because it did not interview Mr W's pupil. This meant Mr W did not get a full response to his concerns based on all of the available evidence.

Putting it right

During our investigation, DVSA said it wanted to apologise to Mr W and explain what action it had taken as a result of his complaint. It said it wanted to make sure that complaints would be dealt with better in the future. This was an appropriate remedy so we did not make any recommendations.