The importance of keeping your driving team’s Driver CPC training up to date was highlighted by a recent court case in which a bakery lost its Operating Licence. In the first instance its drivers failed to meet the September 2014 35-hours’ training deadline. And then, to compound this error, it obtained Driver Qualification Cards for its twelve drivers when they hadn’t attended the required training courses.
At the other end of the food chain, as it were, is Bidvest Foodservice – both in terms of size and its commitment to Driver CPC. The company customers are professional kitchens in pubs, schools, universities and care homes. It stocks over 13,000 food products along with a range of beverages and also supplies both catering and cleaning supplies.
To meet the needs of its country-wide customer base, Bidvest Foodservice has 23 foodservice depots and employs 1,400 drivers – all of whom require Driver CPC training. “Initially this was done in-house,” says Ewan Thomson, Bidvest Foodservice’s Transport Training Manager. “We employed two trainers but were finding that travelling between different depots was becoming untenable, so we decided to outsource.”
Bidvest Foodservice contacted five national providers. After a careful selection process, they asked Driver Hire Training to undertake a pilot programme with five of their depots, training 330 drivers. Feedback from them was positive, so the company asked Driver Hire to provide training for over 900 drivers covering all its UK foodservice depots. The brief was to ensure that all of them reach the required 35 hours training by the next Driver CPC deadline date in September 2019.
“At Bidvest Foodservice, Driver CPC is much more than a box ticking exercise. We see it as enhancement of the skill and professionalism of our drivers. That fits very much with the Bidvest Foodservice ethos,” Ewan continues. “The wide range of topics offered by Driver Hire Training was a key element in our decision. In addition, they provide us with a high level of management – organising Driver CPC training venues, trainers, course materials and issuing joining instructions to our drivers. They also ensure that drivers who can’t make the original date aren’t forgotten about and offered alternative dates and venues. In addition they provide us with quarterly reports so we can check our drivers’ progress and make sure they’re up to date.”
To find out more about Driver CPC courses available and how Driver Hire can help click here – www.driverhire.co.uk/training