Scottish tractor driving lessons will restart next week and practical tests will take place again next month.
Lessons and tests were suspended due to the coronavirus pandemic. However the Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) and Scottish Government have confirmed lessons can resume on July 22 and tests on August 3.
NFU Scotland welcomed the news and said access to driving tests was critical as harvest approaches. The union’s legal and technical chairman Tom French said: “This announcement will allow businesses to plan ahead to ensure our agricultural workforce can do their essential work and support the nation by producing and harvesting world-class food.”
He said emergency driving tests were available to critical workers, including those in the food sector, and details are online here.
Meanwhile, the tractor market is beginning to recover from the Covid-19 crisis, according to the Agricultural Engineers Association (AEA).
Figures from the body reveal 932 new tractors over 50 horsepower were registered in the UK last month – down 15% on June 2019.
AEA agricultural economist Stephen Howarth said the monthly decline was much smaller than in April and May when sales were down 42% and 50.6% respectively.
He said: “This is likely to be partly due to an easing of the impact of Covid-19 on delivery times as factories across Europe were generally back and running, albeit sometimes at reduced capacity.
“The effect of the virus, along with other factors negatively impacting on demand for tractors, such as the weather and political uncertainty, can be seen in total registrations for the first half of the year, which were down by almost a quarter, at 5,195 units.
“That means around 1,700 fewer tractors were registered this year, compared with the first half of 2019.”