After a five-month investigation, the DSA has found “no evidence of criminal activity” after a JAUPT-approved Driver CPC course that lasted less than five hours was logged as seven hours on the DSA database.
An undercover reporter working for MT attended the £40 course in Sittingbourne, Kent, in January 2012. After the course finished two hours early, the reporter made a formal complaint to accreditation body JAUPT and was interviewed by a DSA fraud investigation team in May.
Since then, investigators have been looking into the complaint but confirmed last week that they could find no evidence to back up the reporter’s complaint.
A spokesman for the DSA told MT: “The complaint was fully investigated in line with our standard procedures. It would not be appropriate to comment on the details of the investigation, but we can confirm that we did not find evidence of criminal activity. We will continue to monitor the training company as part of our regular compliance checks process.”
The hours logged to the DSA driver database for the undercover reporter and the other drivers on the course will stand.
Mark Magee, director for regulation, standards and development at the DSA, told a conference on the Driver CPC held by the IRU at Millbrook on 4 October that there were 1,247 training centres and 3,157 training courses approved by JAUPT. He said the DSA had recruited a dedicated team of auditors and all approved training centres had been audited at least once.
“The 2011-12 audit found that, generally, training was good quality and was delivered by competent and knowledgeable trainers. Inspectors found there were some weak management controls and some concerns about course content and duration.”
In response to complaints, Magee said two investigations have led to police involvement, and as a result one centre is no longer trading and one centre’s approval has been revoked.
The DSA has however ruled out mystery shopping where inspectors attend courses incognito, a measure that the industry has repeatedly called for to root out sub-standard training.
