NV trainers plan to support rival register
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• Most of the LGV training industry has dismissed the Driving Standards Agency's plans for a voluntary register of trainers and are setting up a rival scheme.
From 1 April the National Transport Training Council (NTTC) is promising a second register to compete with the list announced by the DSA last week in protest at what it claims are serious flaws, including favoritism towards the NTTC's rival training organisation. RTITB instructors will get automatic entry to the DSA register while NTTC member.instructors will have to pass a USA test.
"It's a hangover from when the RTITB was a government board," says NTTC secretary Stephen Watson. "But it's been a private company for years."
The NTTC says its members' 2,000 instructors represent 90% of the industry and should have been given stronger voting powers in the working party that drew up the DSA scheme.
But the DSA looks unlikely to bow to the NTTB's demands. Calling the NTTB's boycott "a shame", a spokesman says membership of its register is voluntary.
The Freight Transport Association says a boycott will only help the DSA list by providing a set of non-registered instructors against which the performance of pupils of regis. tered instructors can be cornrn pared when the USA list is reviewed in two years' time.
"The ultimate test of the driver's skills is the driving test," says a spokesman, "and that will remain so."