Military testers to boost HGVS drive
MILITARY HGV test examiners are being drafted in to get 4,000 British truckers onto UK roads.
And fast-track visas will be issued to 5,000 overseas drivers in a desperate bid to get goods moving again.
The plan is to have more recruits trained to drive lorries over the next 12 weeks in time for Christmas, to plug the HGV driver shortage that has left supermarket shelves bare.
But Andrew Opie of the British Retail Consortium said it was not enough. He warned: “The limit of 5,000 visas will do little to alleviate the current shortfall.
“Supermarkets estimate they need at least 15,000 HGV drivers for their businesses to be able to operate at full capacity ahead of Christmas.”
A million letters are also going out to all drivers who currently hold an HGV licence encouraging them back into the industry.
The call to foreign lorry drivers goes out after Boris Johnson had resisted pressure from multiple industries to loosen postbrexit immigration rules in order to help fix the 100,000 shortfall.
The Prime Minister finally caved in after the driver shortage sparked a petrol crisis and dire warnings of Christmas being cancelled. It comes as some desperate firms offer £78,000 salaries to new drivers in a bid to get the haulage business back no its feet.
The Department for Transport unveiled a raft of corner-cutting changes to HGV testing this week in an attempt to get 50,000 British drivers behind the wheel. One rule change means drivers will no longer need to pass the large rigid lorry category C test before they are allowed to learn to drive a large articulated lorry, classed as category C+E.
That means anyone with a simple car licence will be able to go straight to training on some of the biggest and heaviest lorries on the road, despite the dangers posed.
HGVS can weigh as much as 44 tons and stretch to 16.5 metres in length. Yet reversing exercises have also been cut from the main test to speed it up, sparking safety fears.
Road safety campaigner Victoria Lebrec, who lost her left leg when an HGV knocked her off her bicycle in 2014, warned: “More people will be killed and seriously injured if road safety is compromised.”
Now head of policy at the Roadpeace campaign group, she added: “I’m worried it has not been properly considered.”
Kate Gibbs of the Road Haulage Association said the plans looked like “desperate measures”.
And Laurence Bolton of the National Driving Centre added you can “be the best car driver in the world” but a HGV is “totally different”. People reporter Dan Hall went to the NDC in Croydon, South London, for a lesson this week.
He said: “It was terrifying. We were only in a quiet car park but the stress of being in control of such a massive vehicle was enough to make me glad we weren’t on the road. There might be a big demand for new HGV drivers but I think it’s safer if I stick to my day job.”