Europeans prefer UK young driver scheme
Page 20
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
Little support for EE'C s elaborate training plans for drivers
by CM reporter
• There is now a good chance that the EEC's massive draft directive on hgv driver training standards will be abandoned in favour of a UK scheme of graduated training based on proposals which have already been approved by the British Government. Both operators and trade union leaders have condemned the EEC proposals as wildly over-elaborate.
At a meeting of the Sussex area of the Freight Transport Association in Brighton on Tuesday, the Association's training adviser, Mr Alan Kevan, revealed that government representatives from the nine EEC member states had recently given overwhelming preference to the British proposals, over the EEC draft plans.
The British scheme (CM July 20 1973) includes an "apprentice driver" training programme which has been hammered out by operators, unions and Government Departments, and provides for graduated development from Class 3 to Class 1 hgv driving from the age of 18 to 21. A recent addition to the scheme is a plan for at least 200 hours of technical training, on dayor block-release, during the apprenticed-driver period.
It was this scheme which British officials put forward with such success last month. On October 28 in Brussels there will be a meeting to draw up guidelines for the necessary national legislation, In Britain this is expected to be accomplished under Mr Peyton's autumn Traffic Bill.
The EEC Commission scheme for driver training, which found so little support last month in Brussels, calls for drivers to be educated, trained and examined in a host of technical, mathematical, general knowledge, road safety, hygiene, social legislation and operating subjects as well as the theory and practice of driving.
Mr Kevan's revelations this week in Brighton came during a talk about manpower problems in transport. Predicting a need to recruit and train 70,000 drivers a year in future, he criticized own-account operators for not accepting their driver-training responsibilities in the past. It was easy to obtain a driver by advertising, when somebody else had to pay to train a replacement.
The onus till now had been largely on the road haulage industry and the Road Transport Industry Training Board. However, own-account operators had occupied 20-25 per cent of the group training associations' training capacity, so perhaps they had made some contribution to the viability of GTAs.
Mr Kevan said the Government's promised 7000 extra training places for the• road transport industry in its Training Opportunities Scheme (TOPS), though welcome, would be a drop in the ocean of future requirements and it was up to the own-account operators to put their own training house in order. If they did not, he said, there would be many vehicles standing idle throughout the country.
Moreover, the interplay of supply and demand would create an elite corps of personnel demanding huge wages which operators might not wish or be able to pay.
Just as critical was the training of fitters, made worse by fitters becoming drivers at higher pay.