Opinion: Are your drivers taking CPC seriously?

Tony Southam, United Road Transport Union (URTU) regional officer, discusses whether the Driver CPC really can be DIY.

Are your drivers learning from the Driver CPC? Are they enjoying it? Are the effects of it starting to pay benefits in your business? There are many questions surrounding the Driver CPC, but what is immediately important, is that those operators who are not financing the course for employees, should really start looking into whether their drivers are actually legitimately getting on with independently taking the course.

The Driver CPC was introduced in 2009 and existing HGV drivers have until 2014 to take the training course. When drivers have completed the course modules they will receive a certificate saying they have completed it. If they haven't done 35 hours' training by 2014, they are not supposed to keep driving trucks.

What is interesting is that drivers will not have to sit any exams after the course to prove if they have even learnt anything. I suspect that the closer we get to 2014, the more it will become apparent that thousands of drivers haven't got a Driver CPC. There will be a number of reasons for this.

There will be a large group who will be past their retirement by the relevant date. There is no point in acquiring a CPC for these guys unless they want to work past retirement. There will be another group close to retirement who will decide to retire early or ignore the need to sit the course, working on the principle that they are unlikely to get caught in the short time they have left to drive.

Then there are others who won't sit the course because they still don't know about it, or think it doesn't apply to them. There will be yet more drivers who, together with their employers, will simply ignore the whole thing.

Given the way the Road Transport Directive is un-enforced, it would probably be possible for a driver to carry on driving for years without anyone in authority knowing they were CPC-less.

However, I suspect there will probably be "trainers" who can offer you a CPC using the following method.

A driver signs up and pays for a week's CPC course, but instead of going on the course stays at work, or goes to an agency for a week. This allows them to go on earning. At the end of the "training" week, they get a "certificate" and carry on as before.

While this might still cost your employee, they benefit by not losing a week's wages. Meanwhile, any dodgy "trainers", get the money, but don't have to run any courses.

Given that there is no set CPC course, these trainers can "teach" whatever they like and not hold exams at the end. Nobody knows what drivers have (or haven't) been taught and, provided they can show a haulage firm the right piece of paper (that is in the unlikely event that they bother to ask), who in authority will know whether a driver has in fact been on a course? Nobody, I believe.

It should be pointed out that this does not apply to URTU'S CPC course, but I would advise bosses to start being more thorough about how seriously staff are taking the course.