Study resources
Everything you need alongside your practice
The official TfL handbook the SERU assessment is built on, our trainers' marking sheet for Topographical route plans, and our guide to reading a London street map. Free to use, whether or not you have bought access.
The TfL private hire driver handbook
This is the official document from Transport for London. The SERU assessment is built on it: the questions come from what is in this handbook, and in the assessment itself you are given a copy to look things up in.
Open the handbook (PDF, on tfl.gov.uk)
It opens on TfL's own website, so you always get the current version rather than a copy that has gone out of date.
How to use it properly
Most people fail SERU not because they do not know the answer, but because they cannot find it fast enough. You are allowed to look things up. The skill being tested is whether you can.
- Read it once from end to end before you start practising. You are not memorising it. You are building a rough map in your head of where things live.
- Learn the contents page. When a question comes up, you want to know which section it belongs to within a few seconds.
- Practise looking things up against a clock. Pick a question from one of our mock papers, then find the answer in the handbook. If it takes more than a minute, you are reading rather than searching.
- Pay attention to numbers. Time limits, ages, distances and money amounts come up repeatedly and are easy to confuse under pressure.
Map Reference page
This is the map reference page that you can find it on the exam day infront of you before you sit a mock tests; Please make yourself familiar with signs and symbols.
Reading a London street map
The Topographical assessment is a map reading test. You are given map extracts and asked to plan routes, identify roads and give directions. Marks are lost on the same handful of things every time, and nearly all of them are symbols people did not look at properly.
The eight compass points
Questions are often phrased by direction: "travelling north-east along...", "the station lies to the south-west of...". You need these without stopping to think, and you need to know that north is up the page unless the map says otherwise.
A quick way to keep them straight: north is up, south is down, east is right, west is left. The four in between are always named north or south first, never east or west first. It is north-east, never east-north.
Want someone to go through it with you?
We run both courses at our Acton centre, six hours, 11am to 5pm. SERU on Sundays, Topographical on Thursdays and Saturdays.
Book a class on WhatsAppThe handbook is Transport for London's own document and is linked, not copied. Everything else on this page was written and drawn by London Paragon College. We are an independent training provider and are not affiliated with or endorsed by Transport for London.