What Driver CPC reform should look like

Driver CPC reform is one of those conversations that’s been going on long enough that everyone has a view and almost nobody agrees. Operators want it cheaper and shorter. Drivers want it more useful and less repetitive. Trainers want it kept rigorous enough to be worth doing. Regulators want it auditable. None of those wants are wrong — they just pull in different directions.

This is our position. We’re a small provider; we’ve sat with the existing framework for a while; this is the view we’d offer if asked.

What we’d keep

The 35-hour requirement, every five years

It’s become unpopular to defend, but the volume of training isn’t the problem. Thirty-five hours over five years is seven hours a year, on average — one course a year. For a professional who’s doing the job week in and week out, that’s a low bar. Cutting the volume to score a political win would solve the wrong problem.

The trainer-in-the-room requirement

Live delivery — whether in person or by Zoom — means someone reads the room, adjusts to who’s in it, and answers the question being asked rather than the question the slide anticipates. E-learning has a place (and DVSA already allows up to 12 hours of it for National CPC), but it isn’t a like- for-like substitute for an experienced trainer who knows your sector.

The record being held by DVSA, not the provider

Whatever else changes, the record — what hours you’ve done, when, with whom — needs to sit with the regulator, not with whichever provider happened to deliver the last course. It’s the only thing that survives a provider going out of business, and the only thing that’s portable across employers.

What we’d change

The repeat-content problem

DVSA’s expectation is variety across the 35 hours, and operators sometimes pick the cheapest 7-hour course five years in a row regardless of what it covers. That isn’t the regulator’s fault, exactly — but the system as it stands relies on providers and drivers self-policing the variety, and that’s a weak point.

We’d like the DVSA record to surface a driver’s module history to providers at the point of booking (with the driver’s consent), so a duplicate-module warning is automatic rather than a question on a booking form. The data already exists; the access pattern doesn’t.

National vs International — a clearer name for a real distinction

The December 2024 split into National and International CPC introduced a real choice, but the naming hasn’t landed with most working drivers we speak to. The price difference is small and the eligibility difference is large; people deserve a plain-English explainer at the point of booking, and DVSA could usefully add one. Until then, providers like us write our own (ours is here).

The Return to Driving framework

The 1-day Return to Driving format DVSA introduced for lapsed DQCs is a useful tool for drivers in certain narrow situations, but the approval scope is patchy across the consortium system and many drivers don’t realise it exists or what it covers. Some clarification — from DVSA, not from providers — on who it’s actually for, and how it sits alongside a full restart, would help.

What we’d leave for the conversation

Class-mixing and shared modules

DVSA’s “no mix” rule on some modules has been debated. We don’t have a strong reform view there — we deliver class-specific content through bespoke courses where the room is already single-class, which works fine for us. If the rule changes, we adapt; if it stays, we’ll keep running bespoke.

Funding

How periodic training gets paid for — driver, employer, government grant, levy — is a question outside the scope of regulatory reform per se. Worth a separate conversation that we’re not the right people to lead.

A note on the conversation

Reform conversations have a way of being captured by whoever shouts loudest. The drivers themselves are usually the quietest voice. If you’re a working driver and you have a view on what would actually help — not what would make the regulator happy, not what would make your boss happy, what would make your CPC more useful to you — we’re interested in hearing it. Email info@my-cpc.online. We don’t pretend to speak for the trade; we’d rather be one of several voices putting the driver perspective on the record.