Driving Practice and Test Centres

Driving Practice

The driving areas tend to be split into 3, depending where you live and the length of the lesson you have. We can travel further afield with longer lessons which will get you in to areas that will help your driving improve.
I will always start the initial lessons as close to home as I can and then will concentrate around the New Milton, Highcliffe and Christchurch areas to build your confidence around traffic and on roundabouts.
Once we have that confidence you will drive into the Bournemouth area where we can get onto larger roundabouts, main dual-carriageways and busier roads.
The final practice area is to get you familiar with the test area and so you will drive to either Poole or Southampton depending where you are taking the test.

It is entirely up to you how you structure the lessons which can be anything from 1 hour up to 3 hour lessons. It stands to reason that the longer the lesson the more you can learn and the further we can travel, but there is no point in doing a longer lesson if you don’t bother to do the Theory Test.
The beginners lesson is a good starting point and you can do either 1 ½ or 2 hour lessons. Then you can build your lessons how you want, either 1 hour, 1 ½ hour or 2 hours. The majority of my pupils start with hour and a half lessons which can then be increased once we get closer to test.
The last few lessons will need to be 2 ½ hours long so that we can spend more time around either of the test centres.

The Theory Test

You must pass your theory test before you can book your driving test and it is extremely important that you do this as soon as possible when you start to learn to drive.
There are various resource materials you can access via the internet and online stores. I can give you free access to Theory Test Pro which is a highly realistic online simulation of the UK´s driving theory tests. It contains all the official revision test questions licensed from the DVSA, the people who set the tests. If you would like this access, please ask me and I will send you the details.
The main Theory Test centre for this area is in Bournemouth at Roddis House which is opposite McDonalds in the town centre.


Driving Test Centres

There are 2 driving test centres within easy reach of the Christchurch/New Milton area.
Poole Driving Test Centre – This is closer and approximately 16 miles away, taking about 50 mins to get to.
Southampton Driving Test Centre (Maybush) – This is approximately 21 miles away and takes around 45 minutes to get to.
I usually favour the Poole TC as I am more familiar with it and as most of the initial practice we do will be in the Christchurch/Bournemouth area you will easily get familiar with the roads.
If you choose the Southampton TC that is fine but getting to it can be awkward as we have to drive through the forest to get there. Both the test centres have access problems and we can get caught up in traffic on the way, but it is easier to get round the Poole problems than Southampton.