One year on from the introduction of the Driver CPC for HGV drivers, confusion surrounds the number of training courses completed.
Although the Driving Standards Agency (DSA) collects statistics on the training hours clocked up, it does not differentiate between those completed by HGV and passenger-carrying vehicle (PCV) drivers. The Driver CPC was introduced to the PCV sector a year earlier, in September 2008.
According to the DSA, just over two million Driver CPC periodic training hours were completed in the year to September 2010, but Mick Jackson, chief executive of Skills for Logistics and a director of JAUPT, the body that approves Driver CPC training centres and courses, admits he has no way of telling how many of those were carried out by HGV drivers.
“We have no feel for the number of courses completed by HGV drivers,” he says. “We are surveying training providers now to get a better idea of where we are.”
Under the Driver CPC, most existing HGV drivers who passed their tests before September 2010 must complete 35 hours of JAUPT-approved training by September 2014.
Sean Pargeter, director of EP Training Services, warns the freight transport sector is running way behind the average of 3.5 million Driver CPC training hours required to hit the September 2014 deadline.
“Year one is up and no more than one million hours have been completed so far. That’s a best guess; in reality, it may be less than one million,” Pargeter says.
“That’s a shortfall of 2.5 million in year one already.”
JAUPT has approved 900 Driver CPC training centres and audited 100 of those. None have so far lost accreditation to provide Driver CPC training, although Jackson says JAUPT is working with a number of training providers to address “non-conformances” with the required standard.
