WIN SOME.. .LOSE SOME
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• The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away. So, it seems, do the Vehicle Inspectorate and the Driving Standards Agency. While the VI has obviously been keeping an ear out for what hauliers want from vehicle test stations, the DSA has decided to terminate a service that is both popular, and profitable. When this Government embarked on its course of setting up the bright new executive agencies it placed great store on the fact that they would respond better to market demands and, freed of stifling bureaucracy, could show flexibility arid initiative. In fact the DSA's decision to axe profitable Saturday HGV and PSV driver testing less than two years after setting it up only shows that the Executive Agency philosophy is not the complete answer to perceived inefficiencies within Government agencies.
Under the old system, when the DTp administered everything under an all-embracing budget, any shortfall in car driver test income could have been covered by more profitable agencies within the department. Now when there is a loss the knives are out. Highly justifiable, well supported services are butchered in order to make the books balance.
Of course it would be heresy to suggest that a muchneeded Saturday testing service could be kept alive by direct Dip subsidy. Better to make thousands of provisional HGV drivers have even more time off from work in order to take their tests and let industry cope with the disruption. The VI deserves plenty of praise for its well-documented improvements in enforcement and business efficiency. But above all it should be praised for learning to listen to what HGV operators want. It is a knack that the DSA and the Dip would do well to emulate.