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Trainers voice anger over cancelled tests
Page 16
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Driving examiners' work to rule causes havoc for HGV driver training centres. Jennifer Ball reports.
A BEDFORDSHIRE HGV training school has slammed the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) for failing to cope with industrial action, which has led to the cancellation of hundreds of HGV tests.
Test examiners, who are mem bers of the Public and Commercial Services union (PCS). have been 'working to rule' over pay, causing many tests to be cancelled at the last minute.
Jim Brady, proprietor of Biggleswade-based Al HGV Driving School, claims he has been forced to take two of his trucks off the road because of the dispute: "It's a shambles. We have drivers who have spent all week doing an intensive course and are then having their test cancelled just hours before [they are duel.
"This is no good for the industry when there is a chronic shortage of drivers. One driver, who had his test cancelled, has now got to wait for two months to get another one."
John Whitbread from Bletchley-based Advance Training Services agrees: "We've got our trucks parked up because we can't get tests.'The DSA has sent one examiner from our local test station at Leighton Buzzard to another centre so we are being forced to travel to Oxford and Northampton, but even then we are struggling to get bookings."
Kevin Munn from Chanter Valley Driver Training says he has been forced to go back to general haulage work to make a living because of the lack of tests.
A spokeswoman for the DSA says: "It is the nature of industrial action to cause disruption and the Agency has sympathy with candidates who are affeeted.Tests will be cancelled at the last minute while examiners are 'working to rule' but we have been urging everyone to turn up to the test centre at their allocated time." A BUSY STRETCH of the M4 is to open up the hard shoulder to traffic in an effort to ease congestion in Wales.
The 12-month pilot scheme will see all four lanes of a 1.5mile stretch of motorway on the eastbound carriageway between junctions 33 and 34 in use from 20 March. Building engineers are putting the final touches to a refuge point, which will take up a third of its length.
Transport minister Andrew Davies says:"If the trial is a success then a design of the final scheme will be undertaken to make the arrangements permanent."
Tony Carroll, area engineer for the Welsh Assembly, says the scheme is on a much smaller scale than similar proposals for the M42.
Its success will be gauged on videotaped evidence of traffic flow before and after the pilot begins.