When you’re learning to drive it’s essential that you get as much time behind the wheel as you can. You need to pack in those driving hours so you can experience as many scenarios as possible, so you know how to deal with them when you’re driving solo.

The Driver and Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) sets the driving test. It reckons that the average learner driver needs 47 hours of professional tuition and another 20 hours of private practice to get through the driving test successfully.

With a one-hour driving lesson typically costing £25, that’s £1175 you’ll need to budget just for professional tuition. If you don’t supplement this with some private practice you’ll probably have to find even more money for professional tuition before you’re ready to take your test.

Because professional driving tuition is expensive, it’s this cost which tends to limit the amount of time that a learner driver can get behind the wheel before they take their test. If you can get in some extra practice between driving lessons you could save a wad of cash, and in the process you’ll also build experience and confidence that much more quickly.

For many learner drivers things aren’t quite that simple though, either because they don’t have their own car, or getting insurance on the family motor is prohibitively expensive. It’s not unusual for parents to have the ideal car for a learner driver, but for it to remain out of bounds for financial reasons.

It’s a problem that’s been around for years but thankfully somebody hit on a bright idea relatively recently – the concept of learner insurance. This allows a learner driver to practise in somebody’s car, and instead of them having to be covered by the car owner’s insurance, the learner is covered by their own policy.

Even better, these policies are automatically issued on a fully comprehensive basis, so there’s none of that third-party only nonsense that could leave you feeling very exposed in the event of a prang. Excesses also tend to be relatively low, at around £250, which sweetens things even further.

Since the first learner insurance policies arrived on the market in 2010, these products have mushroomed so you’ve now got plenty of choice. As always with these things, it’s crucial that you shop around and you must scrutinise the detail before signing up.

While ultimately all learner policies are broadly similar, they vary in the detail and it’s here that you could get caught out, or find that you’re not eligible for cover. What you pay can also vary significantly depending on who you go with and how long you want the cover to last for.

Check the detail

Most of the companies offering learner insurance will allow you to take out the policy for as long or as short a period as you want. In most cases you can sign up for a short time then extend the policy if you find that you haven’t taken to driving quite as well as you’d hoped.

Policies generally range from an initial month to a whole year, but once you’ve paid for that initial period, you can normally top up a week at a time. Crucially, as soon as you’ve passed your test you’ll need to arrange a normal insurance policy or you’ll be driving uninsured.

You should expect to pay around £80 per month for learner insurance (giving you unlimited time behind the wheel) and because this isn’t a car’s main policy you won’t find the usual massive variations in cost that you do with a conventional policy.

After all, a learner insurance policy is only active when the car is being used for private practice. If there’s no learner driver behind the wheel, being supervised by an experienced driver, the cover on the car will automatically revert to the regular policy that’s on the car.

Generally you can learn in pretty much any type of car, as long as you’re supervised and the owner has given their permission. Before launching into your private practice it’s essential that you make sure you’re not breaking any terms and conditions; the car you’re practising in mustn’t be too valuable and it can’t sit in a really high insurance group. So if you’re planning to practise in the family Ferrari that won’t go down too well.

Most insurers set a limit of group 30 while there’s also a maximum value, usually of around £30,000. So if you’re aiming to drive a parent’s new Audi A6 or BMW 5-Series that could be tricky, but any mainstream family hatch should be fine. Also bear in mind that whoever supervises you will probably have to be at least 25 years old, and should have had their driving licence for at least three years.

There could be other restrictions too, such as driving at night, and any car you learn in must already be covered on a conventional annual policy. Also, you’ll probably have to buy a separate policy for each car, if you practise in more than one.

After your test

Learner insurance tends to be a lot cheaper than post-test (conventional) car insurance, because when you’re learning you’re always being supervised. Once you’ve passed your test you’re much more likely to crash as there’s nobody sitting next to you to rein you in – which is why your insurance is likely to be much more expensive once you’ve qualified.

Some companies offer a scheme that gives you preferential rates if you stick with them once you’ve passed your test. But they’ll all charge more once you’re driving solo which is why you need to enjoy the cheap insurance while you can.

* Can’t get to grips with all that car insurance terminology? Then check out our guide to car insurance jargon, along with our feature on types of car insurance cover . And to make sure that you don’t fall foul of the law, also make sure you read our article on 10 reasons why you could be driving uninsured.

Richard Dredge

June 2016