Skills Bootcamp HGV Driving scheme – 70% government funded course

What is the Skills Bootcamp HGV Driving Scheme?

The Skills Bootcamp HGV Driving scheme was set up by the Driver Academy Group (DAG) in December 2021. The scheme is supporting 53 third-party logistics firms to train 122 employees. This scheme is 70% government funded with the third party firms paying the remaining 30% of the training costs. DAG is encouraging more firms to join the scheme before training has to start in December. The Skills Bootcamp HGV Driving Scheme are flexible courses of up to 16 weeks and will help individuals learn and develop sector-specific skills. The primary focus of this course is to train and develop novice drivers and gaining their category C license (rigid lorry), their category C+E license (articulated lorry) and finally helping those with a category C license upgrade to a Category C+E license.

If you would like to apply for the Skills Bootcamp HGV Driving scheme you can do so at www.hgv.academy. Any organisation looking to train an employee with their HGV license can apply. Furthermore, these training courses are available at 60 locations across the UK.

Avoiding a long-term driver shortage

Whilst the short term HGV driver shortage has been eased the long term driver shortage remains and although it is not as critical as it was during the peak of pandemic. It is within the interests of logistics firms to continue to recruit and train new and younger drivers into the profession to avoid a driver shortage in the future. A 2020/21 survey from the office of national statistics found that HGV drivers are an aging workforce with 59.7% of the workforce aged 46 years old or over and only 19% were aged 36 years old or lower. If you compare this to the total working population, 36.2% are aged 36 years old or lower which is almost double the amount that are working as HGV drivers.

Almost every sector in the UK economy is reliant on the transport and logistics sector to deliver them with the supplies they need. Therefore, it is critical that the UK economy avoids another critical shortage of HGV drivers.

How can we help?

Hawsons has a dedicated team of specialist transport and logistics accountants in Sheffield, Doncaster, and Northampton.

We act for a large number of clients in this sector across our three offices, ranging from hauliers to international couriers, and understand the challenges this dynamic sector faces.

Nearly every other commercial sector is reliant on the services transport and logistic businesses provide and, in many ways, this specialist sector is the linchpin for our country’s economy.

With our experience in the transport and logistics sector we are able to develop a close understanding of your business and, through active year round involvement, we can help you anticipate and deal with challenges quickly and effectively.