How do we fix the Dcpc?

UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUMS THE UK PROFESSIONAL DRIVERS FORUM (INTERACTIVE)
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Did my first days cpc training today. Having read plenty about the courses I went determined to have open mind on it.

I tired listening with interest at this mornings module, health and safety and the benefit of the cpc, hard going tho it was. The guy doing the course was ‘transport old school’ and knew his stuff, but was obviously frustrated by the guidelines round delivering the seminar. He was very sympathetic to the ‘in an ideal world this is how but hell were drivers’ attitude so I went easy on him.

But then when ‘facts’ like the cpc has shown that further training can increase productivity by 20% I,m sorry but I cannot leave that unchallenged.

This afternoon was a mix of customer relations and international regs. To be honest I learnt a lot as half the drivers there, are on European work. It won’t be of any use to me in my work as I don’t even have a pair of furry clogs.

I think at the end of it I,m just dismayed. Is that really the best we can do as far as training goes? I understand that it could be helpful to new drivers however, a new driver with a class c licence can avoid the cpc by doing their c&e and even if new drivers took it all in they would expect a sterile world in logistics that I don,t recognise

Don’t get me wrong I’m not against training, I,d love to encourage it. But before I do can we get it sorted so its ‘fit for purpose’?

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marlow:
however, a new driver with a class c licence can avoid the cpc by doing their c&e

No they can’t.

3

Conor:

marlow:
however, a new driver with a class c licence can avoid the cpc by doing their c&e

No they can’t.

They cannot avoid it but a CE course CAN be approved for X amount of periodic DCPC hours

4

I had a second man working with me who was a qualified driver took just that route. He answered 5 questions at the training centre after taking his c+e, took him half hour and as he had 35 hours training after gaining his class c he got a dcpc

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Lets include 7 hours practical off the road driver training, I’m pretty sure that would be benificial to a lot of drivers.

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ROG:

Conor:

marlow:
however, a new driver with a class c licence can avoid the cpc by doing their c&e

No they can’t.

They cannot avoid it but a CE course CAN be approved for X amount of periodic DCPC hours

8
His ‘X’ was half an hour rog, (a new driver)

My x is 35 hours so remind me again how that improves the professionalism of the job cos it’s escaping me. Or do we just sit back and do nowt?

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marlow:

ROG:

Conor:

marlow:
however, a new driver with a class c licence can avoid the cpc by doing their c&e

No they can’t.

They cannot avoid it but a CE course CAN be approved for X amount of periodic DCPC hours

8
His ‘X’ was half an hour rog, (a new driver)

My x is 35 hours so remind me again how that improves the professionalism of the job cos it’s escaping me. Or do we just sit back and do nowt?

You are not making yourself very clear but I will try to guess what you mean

If you mean the difference in getting 5 years worth of dcpc hours from passing the initial lgv dcpc and getting 5 years worth of dcpc hours from the 35 hours then your think is a little off

Passing the initial put the newbie at the start of the 5 year periodic system and costs in the region of £250 for initial lgv dcpc modules 2 and 4
The start of the periodic system for us lot with aquired rights was … nothing

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marlow:

ROG:

Conor:

marlow:
however, a new driver with a class c licence can avoid the cpc by doing their c&e

No they can’t.

They cannot avoid it but a CE course CAN be approved for X amount of periodic DCPC hours

8
His ‘X’ was half an hour rog, (a new driver)

My x is 35 hours so remind me again how that improves the professionalism of the job cos it’s escaping me. Or do we just sit back and do nowt?

Same here 35 hours now completed nothing gained just handing over the sum of £320 just feeling so cheated after having held my licence for 27 years.

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I like the title to this post.

TNUK cannot have a thread on DCPC without it degenerating into an argument worthy of the lifeforms at the bottom of my pond.

So, how do we fix the DCPC ?

If we can all agree (& I think we can) that this job of driving large vehicles requires a constant & regular degree of refreshing & updating of our knowledge & experience outside of the little box’s we spend so much time in. Then we need to start telling them that, as it stands, the system they have forced upon is wrong & horribly broken.

We need to tell them what we think would make our jobs a little better, easier & safer.

I would love to be regularly assessed on my driving. I did a driving assessment 1yr ago when I first joined my current employer but since then I may have picked up a few bad habits.

No doubt due to the pressure the manager of my depot puts me under to get the job done in the limited time available.

Perhaps a regular assessment, say a 3hr drive every 6mth would serve to not only check my bad habits, but also remind my manager that if you constantly put pressure on me the driver all you’re doing is reducing the standard of my driving.

A thought struck me the other day when one of our drivers from a distant depot popped in to pick up a few packs of concrete blocks, he was securing them with a single strap which actually only secures a single block on the pack. I showed him how placing a timber bearer on the pack & then strapping this down secures the whole pack.

Just about everything I find usefull & helpfull in my job was taught to me by a fellow driver passing on the knowledge.

I’m all for training, in fact I am presently training myself for a possible career outside of driving because I refuse to be financially responsible to attain my DCPC for my current & any future employers benefit. Especially when it’s possible to sit through the same course 5 times to build up the qualification needed.

DCPC won’t go away if we ignore it, we should at least attempt to make it relevant to the job we do.

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The biggest problem with DCPC is that drivers are expected to fund it themselves.

Inevitably, this means courses and trainers are chosen on the basis of price rather than content or quality.

Most of the really interesting/valuable stuff involves actual driving, and because of that is too expensive for an individual to fund.

Other than tachograph/hours training, most of what a driver has to know and do cannot be readily imparted in a classroom environment, and would be better taught in a practical ‘learning by doing’ environment. This is also an environment that most drivers would feel happier in.

Most of what the Driver CPC is supposed to teach is not for the benefit of the driver, but for the benefit of his employer or society as a whole. The way to ‘cure’ the Driver CPC is to make sure that those who benefit from it pay for it.

BTYW I think that the Driver CPC is potentially a good thing, but it has gone wrong in an entirely predictable way.

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GasGas:
Other than tachograph/hours training, most of what a driver has to know and do cannot be readily imparted in a classroom environment, and would be better taught in a practical ‘learning by doing’ environment. This is also an environment that most drivers would feel happier in.

I really do want to improve the way I work, but I feel that the DCPC is a pathetic way to go about achieving this.

The biggest barrier that stops me from doing my job better is my transport planner. He has unrealistic expectations on how the job can be done in a certain time frame, even before you factor any safety aspects into it.

I want to punch him till it hurts, but I really want him to spend at least a day riding shotgun in my cab, so he can appreciate the difficulties I face & perhaps lower his expectations on how long something’s going to take to achieve.

I’m under the pressure of losing my job for non performance, he’s under the pressure of losing his because he can’t make me perform !

Where does it all stop?

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I think a better idea (or at least closer to being useful) would be to have to retake the DSA Theory test every 2 or 3 years. My reasoning:
1- A lot of drivers out there never had to do it at all since it was introduced after they started
2 - New drivers ask a lot of questions on here about driving hours which suggests some of it didn’t get learned the first time, or wasn’t studied much
3- Old drivers still ask questions sometimes, which suggests that the complicated interplay between domestic, EU and WTD can be mind numbing even if you have been doing it for years and refreshing wouldn’t be a bad thing
4- it is reasonably cheap, easy to arrange and doesn’t eat up that much time
5- you actually have some measure at the end of it whether you have learned anything

Just a thought!

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th2013:
I think a better idea (or at least closer to being useful) would be to have to retake the DSA Theory test every 2 or 3 years. My reasoning:
2 - New drivers ask a lot of questions on here about driving hours which suggests some of it didn’t get learned the first time, or wasn’t studied much

There is not much about them in the current theory tests

A trick was missed with the initial dcpc theory module 2 - that is a senario test but would be better as a test on the regs

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Fixing the DCPC is to some extent at-least pretty easy in theory, all currently officially recognised training such as ADR, Moffitt ec’t should automatically be approved for the DCPC, so if you do 5 days training in say ADR, that should be recognised as five 7 hour courses for the DCPC.

All other classroom based courses could be done as home study, and the understanding of the subject could be assessed with a reasonably short multi-choice test, it shouldn’t be too difficult to organise places to be used as test centres.

This would mean that drivers would have to study to absorb the required knowledge, but the study could be done without cost and over a longer period of time, in fact hopefully you would find that most drivers would probably partake in on-going study.

Courses that are not classroom based, and some that are classroom based but require attendance (such as first aid), should be subsidised, with the driver or company paying about half the cost.

The result of this would, in my opinion at-least, be better trained drivers with a greater degree of knowledge, a DCPC that actually meant something, which in turn would raise the profile of people who drive large vehicles for a living.

That’s the theory, in practice of course it’s not going to happen because there are too many people making money out of the present set-up :unamused:

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…

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marlow:
'…Did my first days cpc training today … can we get it … ‘fit for purpose’…?

Why not do a copy/paste version of your original post to your MP to through this link:

writetothem.com/

Also, ask them how wedded they are to the EU, because it’s the EU that is telling the UK that it must have the DCPC.

Maybe also mention UKIP and how they are against nonsense foreign intrusion into UK affairs and that there are local elections coming up this week :wink:

17

When we all have our 35 hours of education and we have our shiny new certificates,then surely another 2 pound an hour will be coming our way ,lets turn this negative into a positive .more qualifications means more reward especially if productivity will increase by 20%.

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Listen chaps, “they” want you to do it as they think it will make us safer drivers, it won’t make any difference to road safety. It justifies a few folks jobs in Brussels & is a boost to the training school coffers and in effect to the wider economy, great…

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Silver_Surfer:
Listen chaps, “they” want you to do it as they think it will make us safer drivers, it won’t make any difference to road safety. It justifies a few folks jobs in Brussels & is a boost to the training school coffers and in effect to the wider economy, great…

I agree that it won’t make any difference to road safety, and that it’s been implemented in the UK in such a way that the only people who will make any real gains from it are the trainers, and of course it is a nice little earner for the government through JAUPT.

But the simple fact is that we’re stuck with it, so I see no harm in discussing how it could have been implemented better and in a way that some benefit could have been gained from it, no matter how small.

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I have my DCPC card ,so that makes me more Pro. than most of you lot,doesnt it?I have a C licence as well as a bus licence.In the last 18 years I have spent about 80 days driving 7.5.tonners and Class 2s.I mainly drive buses,this shows how pointless the whole thing is.