Gents - I’d appreciate your valuable input into my scenario please:-
We are construction workers - well, civil engineers/surfacing contractors based in the South West.
We have tipper wagons that we use to transport our materials and our equipment to the job sites (predominately a different worksite daily) - some days we will drive to the job and park the wagons up and go about our daily work - whereas others, we would be excavating and taking away subsoil from a jobsite and bringing in fresh stone to build whatever it was we were constructing. Then the next day we might run to the tarmac plant and collect 6t of material. We mostly work within 50 miles of base and use a combination of analogue & digital tachographs.
Do you think we in in scope of requiring DCPC? Thanks in advance.
I would call the DVSA DCPC hotline on 0191 201 8112 for a definitive - might take a few redials to get through - ignore the automated message - call 9am to noon mon to fri
You don’t need Driver CPC if the vehicle you drive is:
used for non-commercial carriage of passengers or goods for personal use used to carry material or equipment you use for your job - but driving the vehicle can’t be the main part of your job
used for driving lessons for anyone who wants to get a driving licence or a Driver CPC
used by, or is under the control of, the armed forces, civil defence, the fire service and forces responsible for maintaining public order
used in states of emergency or for rescue missions
driven to or from pre-booked appointments at official testing centre driven within 50 km of your base, is not carrying passengers or goods, and driving a lorry, bus or coach is not your main job
I would call the DVSA DCPC hotline on 0191 201 8112 for a definitive - might take a few redials to get through - ignore the automated message - call 9am to noon mon to fri
I doubt you’ll get a definitive answer from the DVSA, the standard reply seems to be get independent legal advice. They will point you to the exemptions on the websites, but it’s up to you to decide how it works for your business and this is really how it will be until some cases go to court.
I think it’s borderline as well, the 50miles thing is irrelevant.
But you could try using this to justify it:
You don’t need Driver CPC if you’re carrying equipment or material that you’ll use in the course of your work, provided that driving the vehicle is not the main part of your job.
This includes:
trade tools
goods such as building materials or cables to be used by the driver in the course of their work
extra crew like a mechanics mate or any other person needed for the job
But I think you’d be struggling to comply with it, especially with the bit about the taking subsoil from the site.
A scaffolding firm had 3 of there men on the cpc course i was on today, i was quite surprised they where there when they said what there job was, i was under the impression it only applied if you drove for “hire and reward”
I think it would boil down to a global view of over a working year what percentage of your working hours are spent driving a qualifying vehicle if it’s over 50% then you’ll need it.
I think it is a reasonable interpretation that you are exempt therefore I would not bother. If the authorities disagree it would be up to them to prove you’re not. As it’s not a complete ■■■■ take of the exemptions I think most likely they will just say go and do it if they disagree but they are on weak ground to do so.
Scaffolders along with fitters are the clearest example of qualifying exemptions as they are specifically mentioned in DVSA examples and they were wasting their time and money sitting through it.
Theoretically if they did more driving than scaffolding they wouldn’t be exempt but realistically for enforcement purposes they’re going to wave all scaff wagon drivers through.
The crux is this driving being the main activity. I simply do not think that just because you spend one day, every so often, doing more driving than other work means you would lose the exemption. Take the scaffolder exemption, if they drove to a quick job a long distance away, as a one off, no serious person would suggest that they’d suddenly have to do 35 hours of classroom training.
The other area where I think they are talking rubbish, and no court would agree with their interpretation is this business of if goods for resale are being carried. No mention of this is made at all in the original EU directive. However, they’ve given daft examples that a farmer can use his lorry to go and mend a fence but not take livestock to market. Similar case with tree surgeons and can’t use the truck to deliver logs to sell.
Really they need to say no-one is exempt to clear this up.
I agree that it is a bit of a grey area but I still contend that the DCPC is for people employed as lorry drivers, not for people whose job requires them to drive a lorry to and from the job they actually do with the kit for the job on it (e.g. scaffolder).
In any event, if DVSA were to disagree, then I’m sure that their first course of action would be to offer advice to an operator rather than instantly instigate a prosecution.
Harry Monk:
I agree that it is a bit of a grey area but I still contend that the DCPC is for people employed as lorry drivers, not for people whose job requires them to drive a lorry to and from the job they actually do with the kit for the job on it (e.g. scaffolder).
In any event, if DVSA were to disagree, then I’m sure that their first course of action would be to offer advice to an operator rather than instantly instigate a prosecution.
You’d like to think so, but looking at the examples and from the other stuff I’ve read, it seems it doesn’t matter what your main occupation is, more what you are using the truck for.
This moving goods and equipment for use in connection with your business is very relevant for my job or more the fact that one of our mechanics sometimes drives the trucks to the circuit and then works. I think we could have swung that for him, but we also move vehicles for other people so I’ve decided that from September anybody driving our trucks will have a DCPC.
There will be times it might be inconvenient, but until we see how it gets enforced for exemptions I think it’s the best course for us.
It will mean the Boss and a part time employee won’t be able to drive the trucks, but the up side is I won’t have to feel like I’m bashing my head against a brick wall when I analyse their tachographs and see the same errors again and again.
But I do agree with you Harry, you’d hope that DVSA have a reasonable approach to operations that are borderline cases. such as selling the odd load of logs when you got a truck full because you’ve cut a tree down, or moving a bit of sub-soil from a site you’ve been working on.
Thanks for some really informative replies guys, we’ve only got one session left to complete our 35hrs - so I might aswell complete it now - but come renewal time, once the dust has settled, I may look at it again.
What you’ve said is what I was thinking - driving isn’t the main part of our job - it is probably less than 20% and this can be substantiated by tachograph records if need be.
Dr Dave:
Thanks for some really informative replies guys, we’ve only got one session left to complete our 35hrs - so I might aswell complete it now - but come renewal time, once the dust has settled, I may look at it again.
What you’ve said is what I was thinking - driving isn’t the main part of our job - it is probably less than 20% and this can be substantiated by tachograph records if need be.
Its the subsoil bit that could be the tricky one as Muckles said because that does not seem to fit in with the exemption - unless it was being taken back to the yard?
Dr Dave:
Well…subsoil/broken concrete/surfacing, taken back to our base for recycling. Recycled material then taken from our yard to the job.
Then I think this qualifies for an exemption for DCPC
Lets say that 10% of the working day on average is spent either taking stuff to or from the job between base and the site and the rest is actually working on the site then to me it deffo falls within the exemption
Collecting stuff from say B&Q on the way to the site would also come into the exemption
I guess we were hoodwinked to a degree into thinking DCPC was for us; not having the time to research it fully and then no-one to give us full and honest answers were my downfall. Never mind, we’ve learnt a fair bit anyway, so all is not lost.
Own Account Driver:
The crux is this driving being the main activity. I simply do not think that just because you spend one day, every so often, doing more driving than other work means you would lose the exemption. Take the scaffolder exemption, if they drove to a quick job a long distance away, as a one off, no serious person would suggest that they’d suddenly have to do 35 hours of classroom training.
The other area where I think they are talking rubbish, and no court would agree with their interpretation is this business of if goods for resale are being carried. No mention of this is made at all in the original EU directive. However, they’ve given daft examples that a farmer can use his lorry to go and mend a fence but not take livestock to market. Similar case with tree surgeons and can’t use the truck to deliver logs to sell.
Really they need to say no-one is exempt to clear this up.
I can’t see the top bit in red being relevant to the exemption - are we suggesting that anyone that does the occasional ‘run’ in a haulage business will be exempt? i.e. a holiday or sickness cover run carried out by say, a truck fitter, once in a while - the fitter would surely require DCPC for their occasional cover driving?
As for their own goods being transported - again this would be difficult to gain an exemption on this basis alone - otherwise all drivers who work for company’s on a Restricted O licence would be exempt from Driver CPC? Or am I missing something?
Agree with the bottom statement -the only way exemptions will be clarified is if they are all removed when driving an in-scope vehicle. For example could a scaffolder be exempt whilst driving from Manchester to Glasgow in a 26 tonne vehicle on a weekly basis? Probably exempt from DCPC.
Compare this to an occasional agency driver on a 7.5 tonner going twice a year from Liverpool to St. Helens - requires DCPC. Who requires the Driver CPC Periodic Training more? If any??
At the end of the day if you drive a H.G.V.then you should have one,the course is quite simple and there is no exam just a matter of attending and then given the paperwork,you don’t even need to listen or understand it.The Europeans have had this going on for over 5 years,my mate went on a course in france and cant speak a word of French except for bonjour,its a joke.lol.
