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Compulsory retraining a financial blow
Page 26
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I have been reading your articles on the Driver CPC with interest and would like to put a few thoughts forward.
For those hoping it will go away, there is no chance this will happen. My personal view is that the /' training regime being imposed by our Europe an masters in Brussels is a knee-jerk reaction to those few indiscriminate hauli ers who like to cut corners to maximise profit and bring the industry into disrepute.
The majority of hauliers already undertake a degree of retraining with their drivers by updating their knowledge on a regular basis. The new regulations for driver requalification will place another financial burden on a struggling industry.
As a training provider, I envisage training will cost £400 per person (where training is carried out in a five-day block) and probably £500-plus for individuals who opt for a series of one-day courses. This is probably marginal compared with the extra costs to the employer for paying drivers to take the time off work to attend the course and the overtime/agency costs to cover the drivers' work.
I agree with your comments regarding who pays for the training. If it's the driver, we will end up with an even bigger shortage of experienced staff; if it's the employer, they will surely want assurance the driver will not leave their employ.
I'm also pleased to see that the Road Transport Directive is up for review. Perhaps the powers that be will look at rest breaks and periods of availability. A number of drivers manage to fall foul of the split-rest rules by failing to set the tacho to rest when they're in a period of availability (POA) and then exceed the 4.5-hour drive with insufficient break. Some of our European neighbours consider a POA and rest to be interchangeable in this respect. It would seem sensible to allow a driver to use POA to cover statutory driving breaks, even if they omit to switch back to rest. Clive Aisbitt RLS Services