Incoming CEO will be tasked with delivering ongoing reforms that will help address recent issues that have left citizens waiting an average of five months to book a driving test

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency has appointed Beverley Warmington, an experienced operational leader in the civil service, as its new chief executive.

Warmington will join the DVSA on 5 January 2026, taking over from Loveday Ryder, who has led the agency since January 2021. She will be tasked with brining to bear her expertise in service transformation to help implement the agency’s plan to cut waiting times for driving tests.

The National Audit Office recently reported that the average waiting time for booking a driving test was 22 weeks in September 2025, up from just over five weeks in February 2020. The report said the  DVSA is not expecting to meet its seven-week waiting time target until November 2027.

Warmington has more than two decades of experience as a civil servant, including 15 years at the then-Department for International Development from 2005. Most recently she was area director for London, Essex and Eastern England at the Department for Work and Pensions, where she managed more than 12,000 staff delivering services across multiple sites.

Simon Lightwood, the minister for roads and buses, said she “brings a wealth of operational leadership experience with her, including successfully managing large workforces and transforming service delivery”.

He added: “I have every confidence she will grip the driving test backlog and robustly oversee the reforms needed to ensure learners can get on the road when they are truly ready and safe to do so.”

Related content

• DVSA awards £73m contract for new Driver Services Platform
• DVSA uses AI to help create theory-test questions
• DVSA signals role of tech in combatting MOT fraud

DVSA chair Nick Bitel said Warmington’s operational and transformational experience will be “a huge asset across DVSA’s driver, vehicle and enforcement services, especially as we continue our urgent work to help learners by reducing driving test waiting times”.

The DVSA launched a seven-point plan in December 2024 to reduce driving test waiting times. Changes include bringing in military driving examiners to help conduct driving tests one day a week for 12 months, limiting test-booking to learner drivers rather than instructors, and overtime pay incentives for examiners.

The DVSA said almost 75,000 more tests have been carried out between June and November 2025, compared to the same period in 2024. However, the NAO found that the average waiting time has risen since the reforms were introduced in December 2024, from 21 weeks to 22 weeks.

Ryder, the agency’s outgoing leader, appeared at last year’s PublicTechnology Live conference, where she shed light on various initiatives to boost the DVSA’s tech expertise, such as creating pathways for employees in other professions – including the likes of vehicle testers and enforcement staff – to “come and have a go at digital and see if you like it and think it might be a career that you’re interested in going into”.

“We have set up that pathway so that people can come and retrain through an apprenticeship,” she said. “We’ve now seen our first people making a career change from physical testing areas into digital. That’s been really helpful, and people have really enjoyed that opportunity as well.”