About Driver Skills North East
Driving School
Driver Skills North East is a family run driving school based in Durham City. Partners Dave and Sarah.
Dave, a former RAF Policeman, has spent over 25 years working as a driving instructor and instructor trainer across the north of England, getting thousands of safe drivers onto the roads over the years and on to successful careers across the globe.
“After years of working Independently and along with local and national driving schools we realised there was a gap in the market for high quality driving instruction provided in a safe, controlled and encouraging environment with the ability to consolidate tuition into a shorter time frame resulting in a more cost effective way to learn, a better pass rate, more confident pupils and safer drivers. So Driver Skills Durham was formed, we quickly outgrew this with an increasing number of pupils coming from further afield to learn with us and so we expanded and updated our name to Driver Skills North East, as we are today.
Our Instructors


ADI Dave – Our Head Instructor, Instructor trainer, Manual instructor and our longest serving instructor, having qualified in 1997! He provides instructor training and automatic lessons across most of the North East. Dave teaches in an adapted Seat Leon. Dave is fuelled by biscuits.

ADI Sarah – Our Automatic instructor and Office mastermind. Sarah teaches in an Automatic Seat Leon and covers the Durham area. You’ll speak to Sarah when you book your first lesson and when it’s time to book your test. AtomicAuto is our Automatic tuition side of Driver Skills North East. Sarah can often be found with her nose in a book or watching Bake Off!


