Investing in the workforce of the future is vital, says Harper

Transport secretary Mark Harper MP opened the RTX Knowledge Zone with a commitment to bring more people into the industry through apprenticeships and training, including the government-backed HGV Skills Bootcamps, recently extended into 2024.

In a video presentation to kick off a series of Logistics UK Transport Compliance Briefings, Harper also announced the government would be providing £300,000 of new funding for the Generation Logistics programme.

“It’s a down-payment on the workforce of the future,” he said. The programme has been created in a bid to encourage career starters and career switchers to learn about the opportunities in logistics.

Harper also highlighted a £100m investment initiative by government and industry to provide much-needed better roadside facilities for drivers.

While the Generation Logistics scheme is attracting growing

Road Transport Expo 2023 (RTX) was welcomed back by industry last month at NAEC Stoneleigh. Coverage of the products and innovation at the show will appear in MT 7 August. In the meantime we’ve brought you some highlights from the show’s Knowledge Zone conference stage support, plenty of work still needs to be done when it comes to interesting youngsters in the job opportunities logistics can offer.

“We surveyed 4,500,” said Logistics UK president Phil Roe. “12% of them said we are looking at it, 12% of them said that it wasn’t for them, while the remainder said they had no idea what logistics is.

“This is despite the fact that logistics employs 8% of the UK’s workforce.”

In a bid to boost interest, Generation Logistics has put together 100 case histories of

Owners of transport companies that liquidate their businesses on specious grounds in order to avoid responsibility for debt cannot expect to be allowed to set up another firm and re-enter the industry automatically.

Traffic commissioner Kevin Rooney told Knowledge Zone attendees: “Enabling them to do so is not fair on the honest haulier who wants to do a good job.”

Also in his sights are businesses that run many more trucks than are specified on their O-licence.

“You cannot run 36 if you only have authority for nine, just because you only send out nine at a time,” he observed.

Bridge-bashing is a problem that seemingly will not go away, and one that is clearly a common occurrence for traffic commissioners to deal with.

He cited one recent incident that caused major disruption. “It closed the main railway line to Cornwall for two days and reduced it to single-line working for seven days thereafter,” he said.

Such occurrences are often the consequence of a road closure or people who are working in the industry, with over 40% of them from women and more than 15% from those with a BAME background. While these percentages do not reflect the true make up of the sector’s workforce, Roe added: “We want to talk about things as we would like them to be, not as they are.”