About Driver Skills North East
Driving School
Driver Skills North East is a family run driving school based in Durham City. Husband and Wife team, Dave and Sarah.
Dave, a former RAF Policeman, has spent over 20 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 a Skoda Fabia. Dave is fuelled by biscuits.

ADI Sarah – Our Automatic instructor and Office guru. Sarah teaches in an Automatic BMW 1 Series and covers the Durham area. You’ll speak to Sarah when you book your first lesson and when its time to book your test. Sarah can often be found with her nose in a book or watching Bake Off!


ADI Nigel – Our manual instructor in Durham and Chester Le Street, teaches in a Ford Fiesta ST. When not teaching pupils to drive he loves nothing more than getting out on his motorbike and on to the fantastic roads of County Durham. Check out our new livery!

