Taxi Driver Online

NVQ; I began this tedious affair but just couldnt stand it any longer and so walked out. Now Im informed that if I dont have the NVQ I wont get my badge renewed next year. How do we stand here legally? Ive been taxi driving for ten years now, other drivers for much longer. Is my local council/government seriously suggesting that in these hard times they are going to make me unemployed? Will I be able to sign on to get dole money? Although Im selfemployed and therefore cant make myself redundant the council will be preventing me from earning a living and therefore, technically, sacked ! How do we stand on this? And what about those drivers who fail the NVQ? For any qualification to be worth anything there must be failures or course becomes valueless,surely? I of course am not eligible for the government grant as I was already funded so I will have to pay for this myself. I have seen a cost of £550 plus vat mentioned somewhere ! They cant be serious ! My local trainer phoned me today to offer herself as my assessor and to inform me that if I pay £150 to enroll then I will get a £50 refund at the end of the course!! I asked her where I would get even £100 from as Ive never been so poor as I am now. If Im lucky I might make £35 per day !!! (clearly Im not in London, but in a small town that suffers from lack of industry). These people need to see the real world , me thinks. Maybe Im coming to the end of my taxi driving life. Maybe Im going to be having early retirement? H E L P ! ! !

which area?

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

£550 for the NVQ!!!! SPS Training say that it is worth up to £1800

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Grandad,

If the training has been funded via someone else......I would ask them who......then call them explaining the situation.

If thats not the case there was something from Loughborough a year or so ago where the drivers won the right not to do training because the course was sh*te.

http://www.thisisleicestershire.co.uk/C ... story.html

A judge overturned their ban while awarding legal costs of more than £5,713 against the borough council.

After the hearing their solicitor, David Leigh, said: "They did not see any merit in paying £120 to take a course they did not think would make them any better at jobs they have years of experience doing

CC

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Think of how stupid the average person is, and realize half of them are stupider than that.
George Carlin

If you don't do the course the council will make an example of you.

Have you tried lobbying councillors, or visiting their surgeries to give them examples of the poor training.

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IDFIMH

grandad ! £1800 ! seriously ? .............fight them as it doesnt make me a better taxidriver? I think I would be alone on that one and wonder why the whole taxi trade hasnt fought this. Part of the course suggested that lady drivers should wear a nice skirt (and, as the female course leader said, flash knickers when attempting to lock down a wheelchair!), and men should wear a smart tie, (which as a lady driver pointed out would be like wearing a noose for any badguy sitting behind the driver in a saloon/estate car!). With sexist and stupid advice like this is it any wonder I walked out? That and the fact that all the tutor did was to read out loud from a booklet we all had in front of us.

It doesnt make us better drivers. It doesnt make us better taxi drivers. It doesnt improve our business. I dont know what it does do. I already have an honours degree in a diferent subject which is similarly useless, why do I want more?

I am in the Hinckley & Bosworth Borough Council area.

The council says that still a third of drivers are yet to do the course and that , "no nvq, no badge" at renewal time. Im pretty sure they will make an example of me if I go that far but then this council charged £2500 for a business to sponser our town sign, they made and installed the sign and then threatened the same company with a £3000 fine if they didnt take the sign down! This council is run by aliens !

A quick thought though, if I have already been funded but not completed the course then they have been paid for nothing so, logically, they should be obliged to continue with my funded course up to conclusion. I still wonder what happens to a driver if they fail? Do you think they will have to pay for a second course? Will they be allowed to continue working? This all stinks to me.

If the course is funded and you don't complete the course then the provider does not get paid, but, they could bill you for the part of the course you did do. When I was assessing the college had around 6/12 months to get candidates through the Btec and NVQ so they could be paid at the end of it and within he financial year. The NVQ is not designed to fail

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

NVQ for a taxi driver what a laugh, should be the NLEFAC *nice little earner for a conman* all a cabbie needs is a clean record and a CRB, all this classroom stuff is old horse, you learn by experience not by sitting in a drawn out lesson saying hello my name is Dave and where would you like to go?


I'm sure if challenged this could be thrown out asap, and I'm guessing maybe MR Sussex is involved in cabschooling somewhere or plans to be so he can get lots of applicants who hand over lots of green backs to be told they failed come back when you have another £500 to waste, restrict numbers by entry and cash in on the pupils, nice little earner

Now whose the bad guy, you want to keep them out altogether.


@ the OP, can't you hit them with Grandad Rights like the 7.5T LGV license does.

I really wish people would pay attention. The NVQ is NOT a training course, never has been and never will be. All it does if give credit for experience gained for all those years behind the wheel. It falls down because now they are getting the new drivers to do the NVQ so I don't see how they have gained enough experience to get credit for. I have never heard of anybody failing the NVQ although I have known quite a few experienced driver fail the Btec/VRQ. With the attitude of 'a cabbie needs is a clean record and a CRB" is it any wonder the trade is such an easy target for any Tom, Dick or Harriet

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

[/quote]

I really wish people would pay attention. The NVQ is NOT a training course, never has been and never will be. All it does if give credit for experience gained for all those years behind the wheel. It falls down because now they are getting the new drivers to do the NVQ so I don't see how they have gained enough experience to get credit for. I have never heard of anybody failing the NVQ although I have known quite a few experienced driver fail the Btec/VRQ. With the attitude of 'a cabbie needs is a clean record and a CRB" is it any wonder the trade is such an easy target for any Tom, Dick or Harriet[/quote]


It's worked fine all these years without a piece of paper to say so, before Tom Tom and Dataheads it used to sort itself out, if you were good at it you stayed, if not you left, I don't see whay an experienced driver of say 3 years should need to sit this, if he's no good the LO would've had complaints.

Who says they haven't, in Midlanders patch they don't want to know. Apart from that I think it's about as useful as a chocolate teapot but it is the only thing we have. What I don't understand is drivers moan that the trade is full of undesireables and then bitch because somebody suggests some kind of qualification before entry, you're worse than women picking shoes ffs

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

Shoes

The undesirable bit comes into play allowing foreign drivers to apply and take a test in their own country, now imagine you are the guy at the foreign CRB office and you have this application for a bloke that isn't very nice nor trustworthy, the Brits want to know if he's ok or not, do you say no he's a wrongun or do you say yes and shift him out to be our problem?

Personally I wouldn't say he was good but that's just me. Apart from that not all undesirables are foreign nationals

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!

Very true, but at least a British one is 100% checkable, and I wasn't saying all foreigners were bad, it's just I know how it works over there, if they can shift a problem easy they will shift it.

Back to my point of "What I don't understand is drivers moan that the trade is full of undesireables and then bitch because somebody suggests some kind of qualification before entry, you're worse than women picking shoes ffs"

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Note to self: Just because it pops into my head does NOT mean it should come out of my mouth!!