More closures

2:34pm Thursday 17th April 2008

ANOTHER Trowbridge facility is set to disappear following the decision of the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) to close the driving test centre. In future candidates will have to go to Chippenham, Salisbury or Bristol to take tests.

The closure of Trowbridge's Driving Test Centre gives yet another example of bad governance. The DSA is a quango with a monopoly. It has no competition, and everyone has no choice but to use its services at least once in their lifetime.

It has no democratic input below ministerial level, and if you go to a minister the minister will say, "Operational decisions are for the DSA. I won't get involved." So in practice no democratic input either. It has absolute power to do as it likes.

Closing Trowbridge Test Centre saves the DSA a small amount of money. The fact that it costs their customers huge amounts of money is not a problem for the DSA.

Nor is the fact that the government pretends to have a policy of reducing the need to travel, though in practice just about everything they do tends to make people travel further to access services.

We need to remember also that since the closures of Bath and Wells centres in the 1990's Trowbridge test centre serves a large area of central Wiltshire and Somerset. The number of people faced with an hour's drive to their nearest test centre will increase.

So we'll now go through the usual ritual of protest, warm words from the authorities and members of parliament, and the inevitable loss of yet another local facility. We've seen the same process with post offices, hospitals, magistrates courts, primary schools and local councils.

The more inefficient central government becomes the more it needs to make efficiency savings in the shires. What will be next?

TREVOR CARBIN, Hilperton