I am writing to you in respons to Mr Johnson's
Page 34
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
article 'Haulier's Burden' (CM July 1 in order to clear up a few misconceptions in the article.
Mr Johnson credits the Floc Drink and Tobacco Board as 'perhaps the only industrial training board which has mad a serious attempt to provide trained drivers for in-scope companies'. He then goes on say that this Board 'has set up 171 training centres with 27E instructors for which grant payment for courses is
This Board does not, itself, run any driver training centres own any lorries or employ any hgv drivers or driving instructors. Its policy is to advise and persuade companii to train to meet their own needs, rather than to carry out training itself. The training centres and training instructor are, therefore, all owned or employed by individual companies in scope to the Board.
Over the years, this policy has been very effective and certainly companies in scope c the Food Drink and Tobacco Board are making their proper contribution to the national training need. A survey of hgv driver training carried out by the Board in 1973 showed that: '
The food, drink and tobaccc industries employed 8.7 pei cent of the national total of hgv drivers;
In the preceding year, training had been provided at the industries' expense fc approximately 9.4 per cent of the 40,000 new licences then estimated as the annual national requirement.
At that time, the number of drivers within this Board's scope was 40,851 — not far short of the 41,730 within scope of the Road Transport Industry Training Board. These figures, set beside the amount of training being provided by food, drink and tobacco companies, seems to suggest some exaggeration in the claims that driver training is paid for, in the main, by haulage companies.
MISS S. K. PRATT, Head of information services.
Food Drink and Tobacco Industry Training Board, Gloucester