Training delays exaggerated, claim GTAs
Page 12
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'Lams and Yorks could train 16,800 drivers a year'
REACTION to the news that there was confusion and delay in the driver training scheme (CM July 12) has been both swift and voluble. Group training officers claim that the delays quoted by Department of Employment regional training offices are exaggerated. Times quoted by the DE varied from nine months in Cardiff to two years in Birmingham, where the TOPs scheme has been suspended.
Mr H. Clarke, group training officer of the West Midlands GTA, told CM this week that within six months of an unemployed person making an application for hgv training under the TOPs scheme, his course could be started. But he agreed that he had heard that applications for places had been suspended.
Mr J. Wood, gto Manchester Transport Training Group, claimed that he had advised the RT1TB that he could handle 400 TOPs applicants in a year. He said that in the first three months of the scheme he had catered for 128. "I am already tooled up to add a further 200 places and I have informed the Training Board of the position," said Mr Wood.
Short of examiners
He explained that one of his problems was that he could not get suitable test places. This, apparently, referred to shortage of driving examiners in the Manchester area.
Mr Wood tbld CM that until this bottleneck had been cleared up it was useless for him to expand his training places. But he said that he had already submitted a scheme to the RTITB which could cater for a throughput of 2,400 drivers a year by his group. If the scheme were adopted at seven groups in Lancashire and 'Yorkshire it would turn out 16,800 drivers a year in those two counties.
A spokesman for the RTITB said that he knew of the Manchester scheme which really only entailed increasing the number of training vehicles and places at existing GTAs. "But," he asked, "why turn out 16,800 drivers a year in these two counties if there is no demand for their services when their training is finished?"
The TOPS scheme, which comes under the general supervision of the Training Service Agency, is designed to produce 5,000 hgv drivers a year, in addition to those already being trained at the industry's expense.
It was understood when the scheme started in April, that the industry would continue to train as many drivers as it had done formerly.