RSA could face damages claim
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• Fifteen candidates who 1,10k their Certificate of Professional Competence exams in March will have to resit them because the Royal Society of Arts has lost their papers.
Sue Martin, the RSA's communications manager, says it is the first exam series where papers have been lost: "We have never known it happen before — occasionally a single paper or part of a paper may go missing for a day or two and then be retrieved, but this time a batch of 25 papers from 15 candidates at one centre has been mislaid."
Martin says the RSA headquarters in Coventry handled around 10,000 CPC papers in March; it deals with a total of 45,000 a year.
"At each stage of a paper's movement around the centre it will be logged and signed for. We have records to show the papers arrived at the warehouse and were then moved to the examiners' and assessors' offices," says Martin. "We know they are in the building and we are still looking. We have now extended our search to other areas of the centre. The 15 candidates who all sat the CPC papers at the North Notts Training Group centre in Worksop have been offered free re-sits in the next CPC exam session on 22 June." But one of the candidates, Peter Hatfield, currently an HGV and PSV instructor, is not satisfied and has sought legal advice to claim compensation for consequential loss of earnings, and general ex • penses. "The results should have been out at the beginning of May, six weeks after we took the exam," says Hatfield. "I had a contract with Tarmac as an owner-driver starting on 1 June which I am unable to fulfil. I also had an order on a 254,000 Scammell Contractor which I have luckily been able to cancel."
Hatfield has been advised not to accept the offer of a free re-sit until his claim is sorted out. "I think the RSA should give us automatic passes," he says. "The situation is not our fault, but we are the ones to suffer." Another victim is James Sparrow of S & H Recovery of Ferrybridge, Yorkshire, which runs a 52-vehicle service and recovery operation from four garages along the Al.
"I wanted to move into car transporting and had already bought a transporter — which is now standing idle — and a trailer, which I have now sold," says Sparrow. "I have lost money over this but there seems no chance of any recompense. I will have to re-sit the exam in June as I have obligations to fulfil and need my CPC." Jane Priestly, course tutor at the Centre for Transport Studies in Warley, Lancs says: "This is the first batch of CPC papers to be dealt with since the RSA moved from London to Coventry at Christmas, and there may be a few teething problems."