The head of road freight and transport policy at the FTA has predicted a hectic final year ahead for Driver CPC, but believes the industry can ultimately meet the challenge.
With effectively 12 months until the 10 September 2014 deadline for LGV drivers to have completed their 35 hours of Driver CPC training, FTA’s James Firth said while there is a lot of ground to cover, the training sector has the capacity to cope.
“Industry [both PCV and LGV] has completed 2.2 million days of training in order for 650,000 drivers to become compliant industry must complete 3.2 million.
“While this appears to be one year to complete half as much again, remember that a significant number of drivers and operators didn’t do anything for the first three years,” Firth said.
He added: “Industry has delivered a little less than half of that training in the last 18 months. In March and May each this year the training industry delivered around 90,000 days – which is around double what was being delivered each month in the middle of 2012 – indicating that the training capacity is there.”
Year to go
With just a year to go until the Driver CPC deadline [for LGV drivers], the latest data from the DSA shows as many as 97,333 professional drivers are yet to do any training.
The figures, covering July, reveal 652,667 drivers [PCV and LGV] are engaged in the process (meaning they have done at least a day’s training, defined as 7 hours).
DSA does not breakdown the figures by licence type. It is sticking with its forecast that 500,000 to 750,000 professional drivers will ultimately have to undertake the process.
So far 221,044 drivers (both PCV and LGV) have triggered their Driver Qualification Card via periodic training. This figure excludes all new drivers from 2008/09 that didn't have acquired rights and would have completed their Driver CPC initial qualification instead.
• Representatives of the RHA met transport secretary Stephen Hammond today to set out their vision for the future of the Driver CPC. The European Commission is currently running a consultation exercise into the Driver CPC Directive, which closes on 25 October.
