I’ve been to a meeting today, to a very large training company that are setting up a truck driving school approval scheme. Some of the big names were there, Denby, Wallace, Voss, Viamaster, some colleges, councils and of course little old me!
What does this all mean? Well as we all know the LGV training industry is littered with cowboy companies, all you need to set up a driving school is a truck and driving licence! Everyone knows it needs to change but how? Many things were discussed, trainee ratios, age of vehicles used, paperwork, instructor qualifications, course syllabus and so on.
But as we have i assume lots of potential customers and also instructors on this forum, i’ll ask the question, do we we need a gold standard scheme that good driving schools (not brokers) can sign up to? Do you customers think its worth it? Would you choose an approved company over a non-approved training school.
This has all come about due to ‘apparently’ the DVSA have been told that the Voluntary Register of LGV Instructors should come to an end, as the role of the DVSA is to set and maintain the standards not train instructors to do the job, that is the responsibility of industry to basically self regulate what they do. If you didn’t know of this instructor register than I’m not surprised, most customers are clueless as to its existence and not many driving schools join the register. We have been considering leaving it ourselves for many years as it benefits our customers or us very little.
As I see it, the industry needs some ‘tough love’ for too long now driving schools have been providing shoddy training, it can be such a gamble for the customer, the brokers are making good money at the expense of customers and the poor driving schools contracted to work for them are suffering too. I’m all in favour of smartening up this industry but only if the customer wants it because frankly nothing comes for free, all the work that will go into development and advertising needs to be passed on to the customer, they will however be guaranteed to receive a good quality of service from any provider wearing this seal of approval.
Personally I know our company depends on reputation and word of mouth, but as most people don’t talk anymore but instead go onto google to find the answers, I see lots of people taken in by LGV training brokers. As I said at the meeting - we love spending money on shinny new trucks thinking that will get us lots of business, while the brokers spend money on website development which actually gets them far more business!
Any thoughts on the matter are appreciated, i’m going back in January for round two of the meetings!
