I have a question for either Rog or Diesel Dave. You say that an initial ADR course will count as 21 hrs toward the driver CPC and a refresher will count for 7hrs. How can this be? I’ve recently completed a so called refresher course and it was exactly the same course in length and every other way as an initial course, so much so that out of 12 of us on the course, I was the only one doing a refresher, 
AndyRud:
I have a question for either Rog or Diesel Dave.
As my memory is getting cross wired and I am ‘hearing voices’ 
(see DDs post above) then I think I will leave the ADR related bits to DD.
Safer that way as the springs in that couch are not comfy 
AndyRud:
I have a question for either Rog or Diesel Dave. You say that an initial ADR course will count as 21 hrs toward the driver CPC and a refresher will count for 7hrs. How can this be? I’ve recently completed a so called refresher course and it was exactly the same course in length and every other way as an initial course, so much so that out of 12 of us on the course, I was the only one doing a refresher,
Hi AndyRud, Sorry for any confusion mate… 
The driver ‘periodic’ CPC only starts in September, so any courses completed before then won’t count, as mentioned in posts above. ROG is doing his best to bring us news of the driver CPC. Since the driver CPC is a new concept to us, ROG and others have made a post which sets out to clarify some of the common misconceptions about the ‘periodic’ driver CPC.
You can go to that post by clicking 
THIS LINK
However, your question here is purely an ADR training question, so I’ll try to answer it for you. 
At the moment, there is an option for an ADR refresher candidate to attend EITHER a refresher course OR an initial course. A purely ‘refresher’ course is presently approx 50% of the duration of an initial course, because there has to be the presumption of ‘retained’ knowledge from last time. Since there used to be a straight choice between ‘initial’ and ‘refresher’ it meant that providers had to put on the two different types of ADR courses separately, which causes problems for candidates, instructors and providers alike.
We’ve been put on notice that the whole idea of this 50% reduction in attendance time is being done away with by SQA, because exam pass statistics suggest that average knowledge retention by candidates isn’t sufficient. From my point of view as an ADR instructor, it was often difficult to correctly cover the required subjects within the time allowed, which led to stress for both myself and the candidates. The problem was that there needed to be a quick reminder of the things that don’t change, then there had to be an explanation of what had newly come in since you’d last taken the course. Once you realise that the whole of ADR is completely revised and re-published every two years, you’ll understand that some of the changes can be quite fundamental.
Another reason they’ve given for getting rid of the 50% reduction is that it is a matter for the carrier’s DGSA to ensure that any changes in dangerous goods Regs are communicated to the carrier’s workforce in a timely fasion, but that doesn’t always happen, because there are still firms who ask “what’s a DGSA?” (They’ve needed one since 31/12/99. 
)
I hope this helps, but please don’t hesitate to ask again if anything is unclear.