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 implementing the agency’s plan to cut waiting times for driving tests.
Last week, the National Audit Office 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.”
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.