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Getting a raw deal?
Page 18
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Funding for courses that could help meet training needs for the Driver CPC appears to have dried up. CM looks at the problem and ponders a solution.
Words: Guy Shepherd GAINING A NATIONAL Vocational Qualification (NVQ) seems an obvious way of complying with the new Driver Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC) requirement for training.
The level 2 NVQ in driving a goods vehicle is currently being looked at by the Driver Standards Agency and the Department for Children. Schools and Families as a way of overlapping training with the Driver CPC.
And Skills for Logistics (S1L), which champions the training needs of the road transport sector, says the benefits to employers should include improved staff productivity and retention, among many others.
With the government aiming for more than three-quarters of the workforce to be qualified to level 2 or above by 2011, the case for subsidising such training seems overwhelming.
The need for funding
Last year. SfL calculated that nearly half the entire logistics workforce was qualified below level 2. As a result, it has been urging logistics operators to take a much bigger share of the pot allocated for vocational training. S11. chief executive Dr Mick Jackson says that the logistics industry claimed just £19m in 2005. This was 2% of the total compared with 13% claimed by construction. Enthusiasm for training has picked up since then, and he estimates that logistics will have claimed more than £60m this year.
Unfortunately, the funding for this training now appears to have dried up. Ken Taylor, manager of ORS Risk Management, which provides training for petrochemical hauliers, reveals that funding was promised for future NVQs. but most has been switched to pay for those already on courses. "The government promises something, then they move the goalposts."
Peter Lamer, MD of fuel distributor Suckling Transport, is baffled as to why, after a year of trying, he is no closer to