Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, pursuant to Answer of 20 September to Question 47079, what (a) number of training places were created for job seekers to drive HGVs, (b) additional amount of money was provided to fund these places and (c) number of places were created for apprenticeships, and (d) number of additional HGV driver testing places have been created since September 2020.

The requested information on the number of training places created for job seekers to drive HGVs and the amount of funding provided for the places is not available. The DWP Sector-based Work Academy Programme (SWAPs) statistics include non-HGV driver roles and it is not possible to split HGV driver SWAPs from the data. It is also not possible to identify purchases of HGV driver training within general Flexible Support Fund spending.

The number of apprenticeship places is not limited. There were 1,739 LGV Driver apprenticeship starts in the academic year 2020/21. The new Large Goods Vehicle Driver apprenticeship was made available on 2 August 2021. The data for starts since its introduction is not yet available.

Weekly HGV testing capacity prior to March 2020 was 1,500. Additional capacity has been incrementally put into place since May this year, through operational and legislative changes. Currently there are up to 2,850 HGV tests are available weekly.