VOSA have advised "Where a driver is being paid for attending Driver CPC training then they will record the time as other work for drivers’ hours purposes…………[but] where the driver is not paid and is voluntarily attending the training then this will be treated as part of the driver’s rest period.”
Assuming that what you say is right, it is only going to discourage the good firms who value their drivers enough to fund this horse sh, and put them in line with the sort of firms that don’t ( such as my employer 
) thus taxing even more drivers with unnecessary expense 
.( Ignoring the fact that the word “voluntary” that they use, in most cases might not be the right choice of words 
)
The full story is here;
truckingtopics.co.uk/vosaclarifiesdri.html
Your employer can still pay the course fees, but if he says that you have to attend, or pays you a wage to do so, then attendance at the course becomes ‘work’ because you are not free to dispose of your time.
It’s more to do with the way the EU hours regs are written than the way the D-CPC regs are written.
But at least it’s clear now what counts as work, and the rules are the same for everyone.
That’s how our place did it, firm paid for it but didn’t pay us to attend. He did say that it didn’t count towards working time and looks like he was right
I thought all doing dcpc courses could not count the time as rest - that is what came out on this site some time ago from a well respected VOSA member
It amazes me how you can ‘volunteer’ for something that is compulsory. You can choose when and where, but unless you intend to stop driving professionally, you can’t choose ‘if’
That’s the way our firm did it as well, they pay for the course we pay our own time .
On our last session the trainer said we should record it as other work so this clarifies it nicely. Bit hard on the fitters though driving to test centre.