Not Enough Drivers!
There is a national shortage of professional drivers. If you believe the mass of recent reporting in the press and online platforms, you may think that this has all happened very suddenly because of covid and Brexit. The fact is, we have been tens of thousands of drivers short for a long time before either of these happened. I remember attending a summit at the FTA about this very subject over 5 years ago, and at that point the number was 40,000 drivers short.
There is a lot of differing opinions as to why we as an industry are struggling to attract new blood, with a lot of people in the industry blaming Brexit as the root cause. I don’t doubt for second that hauliers have seen some of their drivers who are originally from other parts of the world leave the UK to return home after Brexit. In my mind this was always going to happen to some degree when we returned to being a sovereign country. The issue I have with using the “because of Brexit” line is we all knew back in 2016 Brexit was coming down the pipeline and anybody who thought that there wasn’t going to be some degree of disruption to many areas of business and life in general, could be seen as slightly naive.
The other main reason given for our shortages is Covid. This, to my mind, has slightly more validity as an argument. Nobody could foresee a world pandemic of a ‘flu virus and how much it would change our lives during the last 18 months. People have cited that some drivers returned to their home country to ‘ride out’ the pandemic and now they can’t return to the UK because of Covid travel restrictions.
The fact is the UK transport industry has been too reliant on drivers from Europe and beyond for a very long time. This may be partly due to drivers, from Eastern Europe especially, happy to come here and drive for the absolute minimum wage. They have done this because, even at our minimum wage, they can earn a lot more here than they could do in their own country for the same work. This has caused the pay level of professional drivers as a whole to be compressed over a long period.
We could go on and on just talking about the reasons why, but what about the possible solutions?
Our government has recently issued a temporary relaxation in the enforcement of the retained EU Drivers’ Hours Rules. This allows hauliers and drivers to do one of two things.
Extend the twice weekly 10 hour daily driving limit by 1 hour (all other limits remain the same).
Use an alternative weekly rest pattern that extends the two week maximum driving time from 90 to 99 hours, allowing a driver to take two consecutive reduced weekly rest periods. (normal compensation for the reduced rest periods must be adhered to).
There are several conditions attached to doing either of these, and a driver cannot do both at the same time. I would recommend any haulier or driver read and understand the relaxation before attempting to use any part of it - click here.
This relaxation has come under fire from several directions. Some are saying that this will severely jeopardise road safety, while others say that it’s a pointless gesture that won’t change anything. I do tend to agree with the second point. It feels like trying to cover up a huge gaping wound with a tiny little plaster.
DVSA issued a consultation document last week on proposed changes to the HGV and PCV driving tests to help with the driver shortage. I would advise everyone to go and participate in this process and have your say - click here.
One of the main proposed changes is to remove the requirement to obtain a category C or D licence before being allowed to attempt category C+E and D+E respectively. This is what you used to be able to do before the current system was introduced. This would mean that the cost of obtaining a C+E or D+E licence would be reduced. This has always been a barrier to young people starting off in the industry, as the cost can be quite high.
There was a very positive step taken recently with regards to the HGV Driver Apprenticeship. Yes, you read that right. There is and has been an apprenticeship for this for some time. Each apprenticeship attracts a certain level of funding from the government, depending on a range of factors e.g. the complexity, demand, etc. This level of funding has been increased from £5000 to £7000 to fund the qualification of a new driver. I would encourage all hauliers who want to expand their workforce of drivers to investigate this option thoroughly. It could have real benefits for them and obviously the transport industry as a whole.
Ok, this has been my longest blog to date and we could go on and on with this topic, but I think I should take a pause for the moment.
Simon.
