Your CBT: The Rules, The Kit, and What Gets People Turned Away

This trips people up before they even book. Compulsory Basic Training is not something you pass or fail. It is a day of training in five elements, and you move on when your instructor is satisfied you are safe at each one. There is no examiner and no result to wait for.

That does not make it a formality. If you are not safe on the road by the end of the day you do not get the certificate, and plenty of people need a second day. That is a normal outcome rather than a disaster, and a school that never sends anyone back is not doing its job.

Get through it and your certificate is valid for two years. Inside that window you must pass your full test, or take the CBT again, or stop riding. Ride without a valid one and you face a fine of up to £1,000 and up to six penalty points.

You need a UK provisional licence and you need to meet the age for the machine: sixteen for a moped, seventeen for a motorcycle up to 125cc and 11kW. Before the course starts the school has to check your identity and that your licence carries the right provisional entitlement, so take the photocard and do not assume they will wave it through.

There is an eyesight check at the start. You need to read a number plate at twenty metres in good daylight, or 20.5 metres for an older-style plate. Glasses or contact lenses are fine, and if you need them to pass then you need to wear them to ride.

• Your provisional or full UK driving licence photocard. No licence, no course.
• Glasses or contacts if you need them for the eyesight check.
• Your own helmet, gloves, boots and jacket if you have them. If not, ring ahead and ask what they lend.
• Lunch and a drink. It is a long day and plenty of schools sit on industrial estates with nothing nearby.

The five elements run in order and they are the same wherever you go, because DVSA sets the syllabus. Element A is the introduction: the aims of the course, your eyesight check and the kit you have turned up in. Element B moves onto the machine, its controls and basic maintenance checks. Element C is riding on the school's own site, learning to move off, stop, change gear and manoeuvre away from traffic.

Element D is the briefing before you go out: the law, road positioning, speed, separation distance and reading hazards. Element E is the part everyone remembers, riding real roads with an instructor in radio contact, and it has to last at least two hours. You will be asked to demonstrate a U-turn and an emergency stop, and to deal with roundabouts, junctions and crossings.

Short version: a helmet. That is the only piece of kit UK law requires on the road, and it must be an approved one. Everything else is guidance, however strongly worded.

DVSA's syllabus does not leave it there. It describes eye protection as vital against wind, rain, insects and road dirt, calls gloves vital, and says protective and supportive boots or shoes are vital. That is the regulator's own language, but it is advice to instructors rather than a standard you can be prosecuted against. The school also has to put you in fluorescent or reflective clothing showing who they are, so the hi-vis is their problem, not yours.

This gap is what catches people out. Nothing in law says your jeans cannot have rips in them. Your school's insurance and its instructors say so, and on the day theirs is the only opinion that counts.

Every school sets its own kit policy, so treat what follows as the common denominator rather than gospel, and ring yours before you book. This is what schools across the UK typically insist on, and what they send people home for.

• Boots that cover the ankle. Trainers are the single most common reason people get turned away, and steel toecaps are often refused too.
• Thick trousers, heavy denim at the very least. Ripped jeans, joggers, leggings and shorts get refused.
• Gloves with real protection. Woolly and fingerless gloves do not count.
• A jacket with some abrasion resistance. A motorcycle jacket ideally, otherwise something tough and padded. A hoodie will not do.
• A helmet that fits and is undamaged, if you are bringing your own rather than borrowing theirs.

Most schools lend a helmet, gloves, a jacket and the hi-vis, and some have waterproofs. Use that for a first CBT rather than panic-buying a full set the week before, because a day in borrowed kit teaches you more about what you actually want than any amount of reading.

Boots are the exception. Schools rarely lend footwear in your size and it is the item most likely to end your day at the gate, so if you buy one thing beforehand, buy boots that cover the ankle. After that, gloves and then your own helmet are the pieces worth owning, because a borrowed helmet fits whoever wore it last, and a helmet that does not fit you properly is not doing its job.

• Buy first: boots over the ankle, the usual reason people are refused and the thing least likely to be lent.
• Buy next: gloves, then your own helmet once you know you are carrying on.
• Borrow if you can: jacket and hi-vis, at least until you know what sort of riding you are doing.

2 colours

Dainese

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Arai

RX-7V Evo 2 (FRHPhe 2)

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• Compare motorcycle boots →

Here are real numbers rather than a vague reassurance that it need not cost much. These are ranges rather than single prices on purpose: the very cheapest listing in any category is usually one pair, in one size, at one shop, and it moves the week they sell out. The range covers the bottom few, so it stays true for longer and is closer to what you will actually pay.

They also deliberately skip the cheapest thing in each category, because that is a trap. The lowest listings under gloves, jackets and trousers are liners, over-jackets and waterproof over-trousers, which go underneath or on top of the real thing and will not satisfy an instructor. Everything below is kit you could genuinely turn up in, at a regular price rather than a sale.

• Minimum to buy for a CBT, assuming the school lends the rest: boots and gloves, so £55 to £110.
• A complete set bought outright: roughly £150 at the very bottom, nearer £245 once you are a rung up. That is the floor rather than a recommendation.
• Heavy jeans are fine for the day, so riding trousers are the one item you can genuinely postpone.
• Women's kit is not the more expensive option at this end. The cheapest jacket and the cheapest gloves we track are both women's, though women's ranges are shallower at the top rather than discounted at the bottom, so the saving is a budget-end effect and not a rule.
• Helmets are sized by head circumference, not by gender, so the same range fits everyone. Lids badged as ladies do exist and start nearer £120, but that is a colourway rather than a different shell, so do not read the badge as a requirement.

Rukka

Kingsley Gore-Tex Men's Eu 54 Uk 44

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CBT has run in broadly its current shape for over thirty years and there is an active push to modernise it. DVSA consulted on seven changes between 7 January and 11 May 2026, among them a theory test taken before or as part of CBT, restricting riders who train on an automatic to automatic machines only, an update to the syllabus, and changes to how long a certificate lasts. As of August 2026 that consultation is closed and DVSA says it is analysing responses. No outcome has been published, so none of it is law.

The industry has been pushing the same way for longer. The Motorcycle Industry Association set out twelve requested changes in July 2023, co-signed by road safety charities, local government and rider organisations, citing 1,623 rider deaths and nearly 30,000 serious injuries over the preceding five years. Their list includes the theory test, the automatic restriction, condensing the five elements into four, and the power to revoke a CBT certificate from a learner who collects six penalty points. MCIA, the National Motorcyclists Council and the National Motorcycle Dealers Association put in a joint licensing proposal on 11 May 2026, the day the consultation closed.

One of MCIA's asks matters for the kit list above. They want a requirement for instructors to ensure appropriate attire for trainees written into the syllabus itself. If that lands, the gear rules in this article stop being your school's policy and become the rule. For now they are not, which is precisely why they vary from school to school.