What progress has been made to date in relation to the recommendations from the Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee report on HGV driver shortage and supply chain issues?
I wrote to you earlier this year welcoming the Economy, Trade and Rural Affairs Committee’s report and accepting all of its recommendations. We are doing what we can to support the industry despite the majority of powers relating to these issues not being devolved. Under the Wales Transport Strategy, we will soon develop a Logistics and Freight Plan for Wales, which will consider all of the report’s recommendations including the current provision of rest facilities for drivers in Wales and investigate how facilities could be improved where necessary.
We are supporting HGV drivers through our ReAct+ programme, which can provide individuals with a vocational training grant of up to £1500. The grant can be used to help with the acquisition of lorry licences and associated qualifications such as the Driver Certificate of Professional Competence (DCPC). The grant can also be used to fund refresher training for lorry drivers who wish to re-enter the sector and provide a contribution towards wages to employers in the private sector who recruit an eligible worker. Our Personal Learning Accounts (PLA) programme provides free courses and qualifications to help employed people to upskill or reskill into priority sectors to improve their career and earnings prospects. Additional PLA funding of £10m million was allocated to address key skills and workforce shortages, more than £3 million of which was targeted at training over 850 HGV drivers. We are also working with Careers Wales to promote HGV driving as a career.
The most recent information we have suggests a shortfall of approximately 60,000 HGV drivers which has reduced from over 100,000 during the pandemic which demonstrates some of positive impact these schemes have had on driver shortages.
In the longer term, there is an opportunity to reverse the problems that have been building in the industry over many years and to create a more sustainable and resilient sector that offers fairer pay and working conditions for drivers.
Any future investment into training will be subject to funding availability from our annual budget settlement.
Officials are in regular contact with key sector stakeholders including the Welsh branches of the Road Haulage Association and Logistics UK, to understand the concerns and priorities of the sector and enable us to ensure the Welsh perspective on industry issues is communicated in discussions with UK Government.
I was disappointed to hear that the £52.5m of UK Government funding to improve lorry parking facilities will only be made available for England. We will continue to make representations to the UK Government to ensure the sector receives the support it needs to continue delivering for Wales.