This recent email alert from the DSA outlines new legislation designed to protect learners.
Driving instructors who pose a significant threat to public safety will face immediate suspension under new legislation that was put forward in Parliament on Wednesday.
Under the current legislation, it takes a minimum of 45 days to prevent an instructor from continuing to give paid driving instruction.
However, from 13 July, the registrar of approved driving instructors will have the power to immediately suspend the registration or trainee licence of an instructor who presents a significant danger to the safety of the public.
Effective action to protect learners
Road Safety Minister Mike Penning said:
“Driving instructors play a vital role in helping to ensure Britain’s roads remain among the safest in the world.
“The vast majority of instructors meet the extremely high standards we require of them, but in the very rare cases where an instructor presents a significant danger to the public, it is right that we take prompt and effective action to protect learners and other road users.”
The registrar is likely to exercise the suspension power in cases where instructors have been convicted of a violent or sexual offence or are delivering tuition of a dangerously low standard, while the formal removal or revocation processes are being completed.
Right of appeal
Instructors retain the right of appeal against a decision to remove them from the register of approved driving instructors or to revoke their trainee licence.
The instructor will be able to apply for compensation in respect of the period of suspension if they are not subsequently removed from the register.
Although I don’t have an issue with this, I can’t help thinking that it is really protecting against something which isn’t quite as bad as the alert implies. A bit like that episode of The Simpsons, where Homer creates a panic about bears and the whole community is slapped with a “bear tax”.
Crap instructors shouldn’t get green badges in the first place. More needs to be done in that area, rather than trying to bolt the stable door once the horse has gone!
Stopping them getting through in the first place wouldn’t run the risk of impacting decent instructors’ livelihoods. This legislation puts those of us involved in it at risk if some idiot pupil makes a false complaint. Penning can pretend it’s about “dangerous instruction” all he likes. But in reality it is the words “sexual” and “violence” which are at the crux of this legislation, and those “offences” are extremely rare.