Check your CPC status — and why so many drivers don’t know theirs

The basic shape of Driver CPC

If you drive professionally with an LGV or PCV licence in Great Britain, you need a Driver CPC. To keep it valid you complete 35 hours of periodic training every 5 years. DVSA records the hours; the qualification card is your DQC.

Two things follow from that:

• You can do the 35 hours however you like — all in a row, one course a year, three courses in the final month if you really want to. As long as the total lands inside the five-year window, you’re fine.
• The five-year window restarts the day you renew your DQC, not the day you happened to finish your last course. That’s often where the confusion starts.

Why so many drivers lose track

Because the system doesn’t remind you

There’s no automated DVSA email two years in saying “you’ve done X hours, X to go, here’s your deadline.’’ If you want to know where you stand you have to go and check — on gov.uk/check-your-driver-cpc-periodic-training-hours — and a lot of drivers don’t until something prompts them.

Because providers change

Many drivers have done CPC with a mix of providers across a five-year cycle — the operator’s contracted provider, an agency-arranged course, a one-off bespoke, something an old employer paid for. Each provider holds their own records. None of them holds the full picture except DVSA — and you only see the full picture if you check.

Because the cycle is long

Five years is long enough that a chunk of your hours live in old paperwork, old emails, old memory. A driver who can confirm in detail what they did in 2022 is rare; most of us can’t say with certainty what we did six weeks ago.

What to do if you’re not sure where you stand

1. Use our quick estimate

Our CPC status checker does the basic maths: tell it when your current cycle started and roughly how many hours you’ve done, and it tells you how many you have left and the date you need them by. Nothing is sent anywhere — it runs in your browser. It’s an estimate based on what you tell it.

2. Check the definitive record on GOV.UK

Then go and look at the real thing: gov.uk/check-your-driver-cpc-periodic-training-hours. You’ll need your driving licence number. DVSA’s record is the one that counts. If it doesn’t match what you remember doing, get in touch with whoever delivered the course you can’t see — uploads occasionally go wrong.

3. If you’re behind — act early

The bookings system isn’t built for last-minute emergencies. Courses need to be set up with DVSA in advance, and the closer you get to your deadline, the fewer courses are available. If you have time to plan, you can fit five 7-hour courses comfortably across three months — that’s the structure behind our Driving Restart.

4. If your DQC has already lapsed — come and talk

A lapsed DQC isn’t the end of your career. It is a slightly more complicated path than just topping up the remaining hours, and it’s worth getting a real conversation about your situation rather than guessing. Driving Restart starts as a conversation, not a checkout.

If your DQC has lapsed, you’re not alone

Plenty of drivers have let a DQC lapse at some point. Some have already got back on the road; others haven’t got round to it; others assumed it was too late and quietly stopped driving professionally. In most cases it isn’t too late — and the path back is well-trodden.

The brand-relevant point

The system as it stands quietly assumes you’ll keep track. Most drivers don’t, and that’s reasonable — you’re doing a job, not auditing your training record. A tool that helps you get oriented in two minutes, with no login and no upsell pressure, is the kind of small thing the industry could have provided long ago and mostly didn’t.

That’s why we built ours.

Questions about your own situation? Email info@my-cpc.online — we’d rather help you piece it together than push you into the wrong thing.