"Driving lessons with Sara Taylor "

I have been having lessons with Sara Taylor for the past year. She has been amazing and always tailors my lessons to my learning style. She is encouraging and has helped me gain confidence in my driving.

"Great Experience"

Excellent instructor, very professional but also very friendly making it much more comfortable environment to drive in.

"Fantastic training experience with Paul at Bill Plant"

I have had my Part 2 Training and a few lessons on Part 3 in Car Training with Paul Inneh.

Paul is a great coach, who is very attentive, approachable and friendly. He made me feel at ease throughout the training process and answered all my queries in detail with examples which was extremely helpful.

Paul has many years of hard earned experience which will be shared with you during the training process.

I would highly recommend Paul who is a great asset within Bill Plant Driving School. Thank you Paul!

"Do not consider"

My instructor was incredibly knowledgeable about driving. Occasionally, he would have a piece of useful knowledge explained in a respectful way.

That is all positive I can say. I do not believe this minor positive offsets this one star review to two, given how horrible of an experience I had. The risk of encountering another instructor like this has put me off driving, likely for the next few years at minimum.

I took lessons through the first half of the year. I was going to take my test, but my instructor refused to let me take it after 50 hours of driving. And not due to lack of ability on my part, he encouraged me to book it.

This driving school seems to encourage instructors to use tactics to make students scared to go and seek other instructors. Every lesson would have a new factoid about how other instructors are terrible, don't care about you, will be worse. Fearmongering was a constant part of my lessons. My instructor then contrasted himself by saying how much he cared, how it was important to listen, how much work he put in. I, for reasons I do not understand myself, bought into these anecdotes, not noticing that he didn't actually practiced what he preached. Any time he wanted us to talk was an excuse for him to ramble on, possibly to take up time to save himself money.

He seemed uninterested in trying to help me learn, and instead would repeatedly explain things in the same way again and again. In retrospect, he primed me for this attitude by going on about it's important to listen when teachers nag in lesson one. Clearly there was an ounce of self awareness that he was incapable of teaching any way but his own, but he was outright dismissive whenever I tried to explain anything from my perspective, or rephrase things in my own words. For example, a stark memory is when I was driving well, going through a busy junction. And I told him, "I'm not sure how I'm driving correctly here," because a problem of mine is that I couldn't simply turn on driving well, it seemed to ebb and flow above and below an acceptable level. His response? "Doesn't matter, as long as you're driving well." Any further pushing just got the same response. Yet he also told me to constantly reflect, and seemed to get both frustrated when I focused on negative experiences, as well as when I tried to move on from them.

My final lesson involved me making a close call. I will put my hands up and say it was a bad move, and it is correct that an instructor would want to talk about that. I take no umbrage at all in any mistakes I was picked up on, only the way they were delivered with zero consideration for how I can learn from them. Instead of talking about my approach and what I did wrong, he pulled the car over, folded his arms, and said, "what's your excuse?" I sat there for a minute trying to understand what he meant, and finally answered, "I don't want to make excuses," because I really want to just understand how I can do better. He went ballistic at me, because that answer would go down poorly in court after I murder someone. When I broke down crying, he then pressured me to come up with some reason about my family life that would make me act in such a way. After a week apart, when I finally contacted him again, hoping to at least get my test attempt out the way, he declined. I chose not to push him on this, as I was relieved that I wouldn't have to go near a car.

I regret ever attempting to learn to drive with Bill Plant Driving School.

"Driving Instructor"

I have just passed my driving test with Sara Taylor as my instructor. I would fully recommend her for anyone looking to start driving lessons. Thank you.