Truckersworld Forums

Dear Barrie

I promised to write to you confirming the areas we discussed when you came to the Department’s offices on 14th July. We were joined by David Glinos, who heads up the team responsible for drivers’ hours, tachographs, working time for mobile workers and lorry parking.

I explained that the Minister, Mike Penning, had suggested you meet me so that the Department could better understand the concerns being raised by drivers who are using the internet forum facility that truckersworld.co.uk offers. My teams are responsible for many of the Department’s goods vehicle related policies including David’s work, operator licensing, traffic commissioners, access to the international market and stakeholder relations.

You said that you have some 4000 regular correspondents through truckersworld.co.uk and around 70 million hits to date on the website. Truckersworld.co.uk includes practical initiatives such as enabling drivers to report stolen trucks to the police and a forum to survey driver views. You felt that the website gives a voice to UK drivers that could be helpful to Government, and I said I welcomed the opportunity your letter to the Minister had given for us to understand driver issues and I hoped we could have a continuing dialogue.

Our discussion last week focused on three key topics:

Lorry parking. You said that the closure recently of two further lorry parks, together with an increase in truck crime and cost considerations for individual drivers in choosing where to park overnight are of particular concern to drivers. Drivers have indicated through your internet forum that they want to see Government taking a lead in encouraging local authorities in particular to enable provision of suitably secure lorry parks including through, for example, the use of park and ride facilities. David explained that Ministers recognise the issues, that there is a study ongoing to understand the characteristics and usage of parks within a 5 mile radius of the strategic road network and that the Department has been consulting on roadside facilities. Ministers will be considering the Government’s role in lorry parking over the coming months and David will keep you in touch with this in due course. He will also put the study team in touch with you so that you can input to that work.



Driver CPC. You explained the significant concerns drivers are highlighting through truckersworld.co.uk and gave me a copy of the protest currently running on the website. In particular, drivers see no benefit in the driver CPC as it currently stands and feel it risks undermining their professionalism. Common concerns raised include the lack of pass/fail criteria, the flexible approach that would allow a driver to undertake the same course more than once as part of their periodic training, the apparent lack of quality assurance of courses being approved by JAUPT, and the costs of training (and in that respect there were concerns about drivers having to bear the costs but also separate concerns about the fact that course costs vary and cheaper courses may not be of high standard). You also indicated there is a real risk of a driver shortage over the next few years as the requirements come into full effect. I said that this is a known risk which DSA, who have led the implementation of the driver CPC directive, are managing. I said it would be helpful to have specific examples of poor quality training and that I would discuss these issues with DSA initially to ensure that your concerns are taken into account. I look forward to receiving any further specific information you have on this, and will write to you further on driver CPC when I have had an opportunity to talk to DSA in detail about your concerns.

VOSA enforcement procedures. You raised concerns that VOSA roadside enforcement prohibition criteria may have changed recently but perhaps not been effectively communicated to industry. I said I would ask VOSA to consider how they publicise changes to procedures. I have since asked VOSA colleagues to alert you to the published website references as and when changes to the operating instructions are published.

I think we all felt that the meeting had been useful, and I was grateful to you for offering truckersworld.co.uk as an additional avenue for the Department for gathering driver views. You asked me to confirm if I was content for you to share this email with your internet forum members. I am fine with that.

Best regards

I note that on the Dcpc bit they have so far only responded favourably to the parts that the UK Govt has control over such as the quality of courses

This is at the time all they can comment on, they need to look into it and come back to me

Nice to see they recognise that the cost to the driver is an issue but I bet they will never offer to pay for it - which they could legally do

with Government cut backs there is no chance, but I am at present working on an idea that might help, more once I finalise my proposal

Dear UK Govt - please introduce a system where the trainer giving out the info on approved courses is checked for accurate delivery of the course contents as there have already been many instances where trainers have told drivers inaccurate 'facts' regarding the EU regs or the RT(WTD)R
As a non-testing clause is written into the EU directive then that is not an option for a remedy to the above


Parking - still no offer from them to build and run Govt truck parking sites.... so I suppose the best to hope for is some sort of massive financial incentives for private owners of such sites.

A new Governemnt they need to look inot what the last government were doing in reference to the "Lorry Parking Strategy", they are continuing with the investigating to find the needs and areas.
We must allow some time for them to consider how this New Governemnt will move it forward.