Driver CPC ‘not delivering’, say MPs
A committee of MPs has concluded that the Driver CPC “may not be delivering all the benefits expected of it”, and has advised the government to negotiate changes to the scheme at a European level.
The conclusion is one of several in a report by the House of Commons transport committee on the government motoring agencies – namely, the Driver & Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA), Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) and the Vehicle Certification Agency (VCA).
The report quoted evidence from Leon Daniels, managing director for surface transport at Transport for London, who told MPs: “I could have got my Driver CPC by going to the same course in the same office on five consecutive days and sitting through the same syllabus… It is entirely inappropriate that there is a shortcut that allows people to get their Driver CPC in that way.”
Adrian Jones of Unite the Union made the same point, the report claimed, and “also said the training was sometimes little more than attendance at an event, and little engagement in the content of the course was required.”
The MPs concluded: “If businesses and drivers must commit time and resource to mandatory training then that training must be worthwhile and effective. At the present time this is not the case.
“We welcomed the proposals made by the government in November 2013 when it reported to the European Commission on the effectiveness of the CPC and called for more flexibility and for the training to take account of other road users, particularly cyclists.
“But under the current regulations the government could not add modules on vulnerable road users to the Driver CPC or compel drivers to select them. If the government unilaterally amended regulations to make such modules compulsory, drivers from other countries using roads in the UK would not have equivalent training.
“For that reason we recommend that the government lobby the European Commission to introduce an amending directive to require the inclusion of a compulsory new training module in the Driver CPC focused on vulnerable road users.”
