Inside Oxford with Alison Boulton

Learning to drive in Oxford is a shocker. It’s so expensive: £50 for starters to get a Provisional Licence.

Then, asking around, to gauge the local success rate among your friends. Next, the call to try to secure an effective instructor: sorry, too busy.

You plead a little – then a lot. After all, if you’re a returning student who’s not learnt to drive at school, your time in the city is limited.

Well, OK. You punch the air. But not so fast. Have you got plenty of cash to hand?

Well yes, a summer job at mimimum wage, if you’re lucky. Yet is that good enough?

Many driving instructors insist on payment up front, and double lessons – or they’ll not take you on.

That’s £50 a throw. Then it’s up to parents to fill in the gaps.

Additional insurance for a learner driver is a cool £85 a month on top of your standard protection, and the cost of taking the test itself – theory first, before the practical may be attempted is another £31.

Then comes the crunch.

Booking a driving test is not straightforward.

It can take months before a date is available – eight to 10 weeks’ wait is not unusual – and not everyone can afford that leisurely a run up. Other deadlines take precedence, such as a return to college for the start of term.

So what can you do? Apply for a cancellation – but they all appear to be taken.

Now here’s the baffling part: cancellations may be block booked, like theatre tickets.

To get one, you may have to apply to a cancellation agency who will offer you the cancellation you seek – but at a price: £25 to access the company’s cancellation dates, and £30 for premium service, booking by mobile phone.

“It’s hopeless. Just pay,” one driving instructor told a friend.

How is that fair?

Taking a driving test is an essential skill which many jobs demand as a matter of course.

Why should companies profit from an essential service, by stepping in between the commodity – the test – and the customer? What has a third party to do with it, and what do they add?

I have no idea whether a test will be forthcoming before the long weeks of the summer holidays’ end.

What is for certain is that another £62 is required to take a practical test during the week.

But get this – after 4.30pm, weekends and Bank Holidays, this rises to £75.

I’m not counting, but that’s steep. Maybe when putting aside money for rites of passage – a christening or baby’s birth celebration, their 18th, and finding a partner, driving might be covered with a long run up.

How about birth onwards – that baby will be behind the wheel soon enough.