Driving licence and fitness to drive:
You must hold a current, valid driving licence (provisional, full, or international), and produce it on your first lesson.
Fitness to drive
You must be fit to drive in accordance with legal and medical requirements. It is your responsibility to ensure that you are fit to drive on each of your lessons or test. Sickness, tiredness, alcohol, illegal and prescribed drugs may affect your driving. If you are taking any prescribed drugs, please check with your doctor or pharmacist to make sure they will not affect your driving. In the interests of public safety, I reserve the right to cancel your driving lesson or refuse the use of the school car for the driving test if there is any suspicion of impairment because of illness, drugs, or alcohol.
Payments and Cancellation
Tuition fees are normally payable in advance or on the day of the lesson. Payment can be made by cash or bank transfer. If you need to cancel or re-arrange a lesson, at least 24 hours notice will be required. Failure to give 24 hours notice, or if I turn up for your lesson as arranged and you fail to turn up, the full lesson fee will be charged. I reserve the right to cancel a lesson at short notice if it is suspected that the pupil may be unfit due to the effects of alcohol, drugs (prescribed or otherwise) or any other condition that would cause his/her driving to be dangerous or illegal. In such circumstances the lesson fee will be payable.
Bookings and Lesson duration
I will endeavour to maintain regular lesson slots at the same time each week to ensure continuity of learning, however, this cannot always be guaranteed. If, for any reason, I am late for the lesson I will make a concerted effort to inform the pupil of the estimated time of arrival. If the delay is greater than 15 minutes this time will be credited to the pupil and whenever possible, the lesson will be extended by the time due– if this is not possible the extra time will be carried forward to the next suitable lesson. If the pupil decides to take a break from lessons, for whatever reason, I cannot guarantee that they will be able to resume again as I cannot hold lesson places open.
Training Location
All lessons will start and finish at the same location unless alternative arrangements are made in advance. For the first few lessons I will determine a location for practical lessons which ensures both the pupil’s and public safety – this means that I may need to drive the pupil to and from the lesson location; this journey time forms part of the lesson as paid for.
Training vehicle
The training vehicle provided by me is taxed, fully insured for the purposes of driving tuition, road worthy and fitted with dual controls. If a fault develops with the car, I reserve the right to cancel lessons to get the fault professionally check to ensure the car is safe and legal to drive until the fault can be fixed.
Driving tests and bookings
I reserve the right to refuse the use of the driving school vehicle for test if I consider that the pupil is not driving to the standard required and could, potentially, cause a risk to public safety. Where the school car is used for test, the booking period will be 2½ hours, but a discounted ‘use of car’ fee will be charged. While I make every effort to ensure that the vehicle supplied for test is fully road worthy and complies with all legal requirements at the start of the test, I cannot be held responsible for any vehicle failure that occurs during the test and am not liable for any consequential loss. I cannot be held responsible for test appointments cancelled by the DVSA due to bad weather, sickness, staff shortages or other reasons. Such cancellations are beyond my control and therefore the ‘use of car’ fee for the booked period will be charged.
