DSA has not raised standards
Page 15
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I HAVE BEEN a large vehicle training provider for over 30 years and have been used to the negative attitudes that prevail within the industry generally.
We attempted to supply quality training to an industry that had remained unregulated since the introduction of the HGV licence in 1969, but this service was not required. Cheap prices were the order of the day, supplied in some cases by wholly inadequate training providers purporting to be professional.
With the introduction of the DSA Voluntary register for LGV instructors in 1999 we were told this would be the benchmark for quality provision by which the transport industry would set its requirements. I grasped the proposed opportunity to at last be part of a quality procedure that we had al ways tried to provide, but that the transport industry generally did not support.
We were the irst training company in the UK to be accredited by the Driving Standards Agency as an approved LGV licence acquisition centre following its introduc tion in 2002. We have subsequently been reapproved every year until last year, when the economy made it an unnecessary requirement.
We were aware of the introduction of the Driver CPC from an early date and were proactive with the requirements that appeared to be needed prior to the implementation dates.
We were surprised to learn that suddenly there was a pool of more than 1,000 training providers available to carry out this training. I cannot believe this because statistically, instructional staff have never existed in the numbers that are now being quoted. Where are they suddenly coming from?
One example may be the ‘instructor/NVQ assessor’ that arrived to carry out ‘assessments’ on the staff of a local coach operator who, it transpired, had never been in a coach in his life! Forgive my sarcasm, but this is totally wrong, and if this is where these so-called qualiied instructors are coming from, then the industry would indeed be justiied in its concerns of quality provision of the Driver CPC being a waste of time!
The economy has put paid to an early take-up of the requirements and we training providers are awaiting the uptake that would be a return on an initial investment that in some instances has cost us our livelihoods.
Gary Curtis Driver Training Centre
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