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Above: Understanding smart motorways can be an issue for those who learned to drive overseas.
guys are not getting one for six months’.” The amount of time employees spend in the country is hugely relevant. Overseas drivers with a licence from their home country or an international driving permit are legally required to have a UK licence after 12 months but driving test slots are in severely short supply. The pandemic created the initial backlog, but a shortage of examiners – plus online bots buying up and reselling test slots – have contributed. Citing DVSA data, BBC Verify said the average wait time reached 21.7 weeks in March, up from six weeks at the start of 2020, and that three quarters of Great Britain’s 319 driving test centres had hit the maximum wait time of 24 weeks for a practical test.
Howard tells us he booked tests for pupils in April and the earliest available slots were late September, while Paterson says the wait times often catch out businesses and overseas employees alike. “People go on a UK familiarisation course, then think they’ll get their test under their belt and Bob’s your uncle,” he says. “You’re potentially going to have to schedule it six/eight/12 months in advance to actually acquire your driving licence.” “We know it’s coming, so we can build it in,” adds Hammond. “If we know there’s a three- or a six-month backlog, then we’ll get on it early. As long as they’re in the queue, we’re OK. We can
take a cancellation and say, ‘we’ve got your slot next Tuesday, away you go’.”
An initial assessment to understand where new employees are from, their level of exposure to UK roads and how long they are expected to be in the country will pay dividends ahead of funnelling them training.
Hammond explains his process: “They will arrive in the UK, come into our regional office facilities, do their induction, do all the paperwork and the on-boarding. We will then get the driver assessment done in that first week.
“What we don’t want to do is send them off to wherever it might be in a van and then go, ‘actually, we shouldn’t let you drive it'. We find the best way of doing it is, if we’ve got a half dozen guys coming in together, we get them all at the beginning, and we can deal with it in those first two or three days.”
According to Lawrence, there are plenty of examples of companies skipping all the above and systematically handing overseas drivers a set of hire car keys. He advises asking whether employees need to drive at all.
“Are we taking the best, first-case scenario, which is don’t drive?” he asks. “Sustainability- wise, public transport is better, and it’s also the best way to reduce the risk.”
“You have a responsibility to make sure your drivers are safe, are trained, are educated, and more importantly are confident .”
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Best practice comprises a risk assessment either before employees reach the UK or on arrival, familiarisation training before they drive for work and, for those even remotely likely to stick around for more than a year, appointments for their theory and practical driving tests on the double. When asked for advice to fleet operators about overseas employees, Hammond says they have “a personal responsibility” to ensure drivers are prepared for UK roads.
“You have a responsibility – not just to your own drivers, to every driver on the road – to make sure your drivers are safe, are trained, are educated, and more importantly are confident. It’s easy to say, ‘it’s not my problem; it’ll be OK', but ultimately, that driver’s driving one of your vehicles – that’s the biggest billboard you’ve got going down the road.
“I also want to think that, if that driver is behind my wife or my daughter, I’m confident that he’s going to stop when she stops.”
Hammond is a fleet manager and does not sell training courses, so can provide an objective opinion about whether they are a worthwhile investment. This is what he says.
“We probably have about an 8% failure rate – that’s drivers who don’t meet the [course] standard, and we’ve had to refuse them the right to drive. For the ones that have been approved to drive, I don’t think we’ve had any incidents reported with any of them in the last 12 months at all. You were probably looking at about a 30% incident rate before that.”
Proof, if it were needed, that proper training helps to keep the bloody doors on.
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