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1-school reduces dole queue
Page 24
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• Chronic driver shortages around the country are giving new life to training providers, including one in the Midlands which offers the unemployed the chance to be LGV drivers. Kingswinford-based trainer KITS set up the free 26-week course in September 1996 to offer the relevant theoretical and practical skills needed to take to the road. These include tachograph knowledge, load security, vehicle maintenance, route planning and customer care. Study on the course does not exceed 16 hours a week, thus allowing students to keep claiming their benefits. The course is backed and approved by the Road Haulage Training Development Council, Stourbridge College and the Royal Society of Arts. It is local authority funded. So far 71% of the students successfully completing the course have found work as drivers.
Stewart Gemmell, customer service manager at Ellesmere Port's Driving Services, believes the trend for training the unemployed from scratch into LGV and HGV drivers will quickly grow due to the shortages. His only concern, one raised by drivers he knows, is that the people getting trained may not be 100% committed to becoming truck drivers. "They may just see it as a job to get off the dole queue, causing possible safety problems," he says.