‘Last orders’ for Driver CPC, warn training firms

With less than 200 days to go before the Driver CPC training deadline for PCV licence holders, both passenger and freight sectors of the transport industry are still not sufficiently engaged with the issue, leading trainers warn.

Derek Broomfield, managing director of Essex-based training provider and tachograph analysis provider Novadata said: “I estimate that, come September 10 of this year, 30 per cent of passenger drivers still won’t have it. The smaller coach operators, with 5-10 vehicles, have still not embraced it.

“Most trainees that come to us are still doing their first course: and if they are passenger drivers that means that they have four more to fit in before September 10.”

Some quite large operators have taken the legally correct but unwise view that it is the drivers’ responsibility to get trained, and are doing little or nothing to facilitate this.

“One truck operator we know of has told his 200 drivers to go and get it themselves.”

In contrast, other employers are attempting to ensure that new recruits won’t be a training liability.

“Some trainees are doing a whole week at a time to get qualified, because they’ve been told by a prospective employer that they won’t be taken on unless they have the card,” Broomfield reported.

There is still a considerable level of ignorance among drivers who passed their vocational licence tests after the inception of Driver CPC: many don’t realise that they should have passed all four test modules and taken possession of a Driver CPC card before taking up employment as a driver.

“Drivers who took their tests after the inception are coming to us for periodic training, but they haven’t passed modules two and four yet so we can’t record their hours and they shouldn’t be driving commercially,” Broomfield said.

“The course most in demand is tachos and drivers’ hours: it’s operator’s licence protection for employers and vocational driving licence protection for employees.”

Broomfield is also surprised at reports of drivers repeating the same course up to five times just to get the qualification:  “We now offer over 250 hours of accredited courses,” he said.

Momentum is certainly gathering. The FTA, which draws its training clientele mainly from its membership of medium and large fleet operators says that this January was up 29 per cent on the January the previous year, which itself was 16 per cent up on January 2011.

Sean Pargetter, the sales director of EP Training, has also noticed an increase in individuals booking a week’s course to obtain the qualification for themselves….and increasing demand for training from the passenger sector, even though it was not originally a specialisation of his company indicating perhaps that pressure is mounting for course deliver prior to September.

“When we started Driver CPC training we did nothing for PCV…we now find about 25 per cent of delegates are PCV drivers as the deadline nears. We’ve doubled the number of different courses that we offer since we started, but the most popular remains drivers’ hours and legal obligations.

“Until recently most of our DCPC trainees were doubling up another qualification such as ADR or crane loader…now people are going for the DCPC in own right and doing the specific courses.

“As the deadline nears, it’s going to be a case of balancing capacity against need. There are still a lot of people and companies out there who have done nothing…but there are over 1,000 registered trainers too.

Pargetter estimated that currently around 70 per cent of his delegates were on courses organised by their employers, with the remainder of self-organised clients including owner-drivers. Most self-organised delegates are having a week out and doing it all in one hit, and some of those employers who are ‘late starters’ are also taking this approach.

“There are companies who keep telling drivers they are going to get something organised, but don’t. Their drivers are getting frustrated and coming in for training off their own bat. I suspect they are looking to make themselves more desirable as employees in the future.

“I know at least one bus company with 200+ drivers which has still not got anything done.”

This prevarication is worrying Jason Vallint, business development director at AA DriveTech.

“Capacity to train has not been a problem,” he said, pointing out that his organisation alone could have trained 500,000 drivers since 2008 had the demand been there.

“While the quality of some training offered may have been questionable as you expect when a market is created overnight, the real problem has been lack of initial demand.”

Vallint warns of a long tail of small and medium companies who are still putting off engagement with the issue.

“We know that size-wise we are probably in the top five per cent of providers, and our business has doubled year-on-year, but operators need to remember that the number of days when they can actually get drivers together and off the road for training are very limited, and training individuals one-to-one is an expensive exercise.”

His greatest concern is that if the legislation is not properly enforced on any laggards in the passenger sector after 9 September 2013, compliant operators will feel that they are being penalised and truck operators will fail to take the issue seriously in the coming year.

“I hope that there won’t be a need for this, but it will have to be enforced with an iron fist with high-profile test cases,” he warns. “If not, then its credibility will collapse and non-compliant truck operators will laugh. There should be no excuses allowed. The message needs to get out: this really is ‘last orders’ for Driver CPC training.”