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Industry will benefit from Driver CPCs
Page 20
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1 WONDERED if I might take the time and trouble to correct two of your contributors to the panel in the recent discussion concerning the Driver CPC?
Martin Barnes of Navarm said that small to medium companies will wait five years then just advertise for drivers with a CPC (CM 21 February). There are two problems here. First, who's really going to want to work for a company that doesn't provide Driver CPC training?
Five years on, there's going to be a lot of new drivers who will expect the Driver CPC as part of their package. Not too many of these drivers will be interested in a firm that doesn't provide the training. Second, what about the drivers who already work for these small to medium-sized hauliers?
Without a Driver CPC by 2014, they won't be able to work as a commercial driver, and if the company hasn't provided the required training, that's going to be a load of disgruntled drivers all looking for legal redress.
Other mandatory training requirements of the type that, for example, electricians or gas fitters are expected to have are provided by their respective companies. What employment tribunal is seriously going to make an exception for haulage?
TRS Engineering's Charles Burke claims that by taking the training early, a driver will get 10-years' CPC cover until 2019. No, not as the DSA understands it, they won't. Once a driver informs the DSA that they have done their fifth module of the five, the DSA provides a new CPC, which expires five years after it is granted.
The 2009 and 2014 dates on record are start dates — these will change as each driver records their training records with the DSA.
Finally, I've been a commercial professional driver for 37 years. Under the rules, I could avoid the Driver CPC by simply dropping out of the industry at 2014 and taking my pension the following year. Why would I want to do that? The Driver CPC is the best thing that has ever hit this industry.
It will raise industry standards create a sense of professionalism, and will mean the UK will learn to appreciate its professional drivers. If the Dutch and the French, who have been taking CPCs for 20 years, can get respect, so can the 'Great British Trucker'.
Rob Thomas B otch eston Leicestershire