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Is it too easy to become a haulier? In a cut-throat market, besieged by critics who say too many lorries are unsafe, this question has never been more important. Central to it is the Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC); a statutory requirement for every standard national and international 0-licence application.
There are as many views of the CPC as there are trucks on Britain's roads, but most vociferous are those who think that it is far too easy. But as I found during an intensive week's course with the Freight Transport Association, these critics do not seem to include many hauliers or CPC candidates.
After five days in which seven of us worked from 8am-7pm with further study after dinner, the last word that came to mind was easy. But then it was just a week.
Should a journalist with no previous experience of road haulage be able to pick up the major professional qualification to enter the industry with no more than a week's hard work and some home study?
Pipe dream
Michael Betts, Scottish Licensing Authority and the next senior LA, certainly doesn't think so: "We need to make the transport industry more professional," he says. "I don't think that the CPC gives enough in-depth knowledge. It may be a pipe dream, but I would like to make it a one-year practical course done at college."
Betts is not suggesting that all hauliers should return to college under such a scheme. But newcomers to the industry would be required to have the qualification. He suggests that schoolleavers who wanted to get into the transport industry might do the course and then be entitled to take their LGV tests younger than is otherwise allowed: a carrot to make the industry accept higher professional standards. Betts also stresses that he is not knocking the industry. He clearly likes the transport business and respects owner-drivers, but he has many experiences of the shortcomings of the CPC system. Once, when he asked to see the CPC holder named on an 0-licence application, it proved impossible because the holder (as is so often the case, the applicant's wife) was working at her job as a schoolteacher. This case is not isolated: CPC holders named on the 0-licence often have little to do with the day-to-day running of the business.
"I'm not attacking owner-drivers, many of whom are hard working and highly professional," says Betts, "but I do believe the CPC holder should be in full-time employment of the transport firm or be the licence holder."
Betts also wants the power to take away CPCs from operators who prove themselves to be incompetent. As things stand he can take away an 0licence, but a CPC is for life.
Betts' views on the CPC are echoed by Mary Williams, director of the road haulage safety campaign Brake. Although Brake has not conducted an in-depth study of the CPC, reports from enforcement officers have led it to question if the exam is too easy, and whether the qualification should be awarded for life.
However, the CPC also has its defenders. The FTA, for example, sees it as meeting the industry's need. A spokesman says: "It gets people to the necessary standard. It is also interesting that many people who take the CPC don't need it for the purposes of getting an 0-licence—their firms send them because they think it is useful. That is quite a recommendation." One frequent criticism of the CPC is that all the questions are multiple choice (unlike Germany, where lengthy essays are demanded).
Peter West is qualifications manager at the RSA exam centre, which sets the CPC on behalf of the Department of Transport. He defends the multiplechoice option: "We consider it the most appropriate method for people in the transport industry who may not have to do a lot of writing in their everyday life."
Guessing
Certainly there seems little chance of somebody entering the examination room and successfully guessing their way through the paper. You know the answer or you don't—and in my experience if you didn't know you guessed wrong.
This, and a 75% pass mark on two papers for the national CPC (there is a separate paper for international), make study essential, although Michael Betts would no doubt argue that just because an exam requires effort on the part of the student, it does not automatically follow that it is the appropriate professional qualification. But that effort should not be underestimated.
Anybody creeping the corridors of the Wadhurst college where I took the CPC would have seen lights shining from under the doors of almost every room at 3am on the day of the exam. The next time someone says to you the CPC is a Mickey Mouse effort (and yes, someone did say that to me), slap an exam paper down in front of them and ask them to do it.
If they're not intimately acquainted with weights and dimensions, drivers' hours, speed limits, accident procedures, maintenance requirements and the wide range of other subjects on the syllabus, then the Mickey Mouse joke will soon be on them.
If changes are to be made to the CPC they will inevitably be initiated by the Department of Transport, perhaps with help and advice from the moderating committee. This committee, with representatives from the DOT, trade associations and transport consultants, oversees the construction of the CPC papers and decides if all questions are valid.
The CPC is set four times a year and the committee meet two months before each exam is due to check the forthcoming paper. It is particularly concerned with the overall balance of the CPC and whether legal changes have affected questions. The March paper has already been moderated, ready for the 3,000 or so candidates who will sit it nationwide.
Around 60% will pass, but it's worth bearing in mind that residential courses tend to have a higher pass rate—at the FTA it's 90%. So, open those books and get studying...