Following the meeting as I was writing up my report, I was considering the above and the possible ‘conflict of interest’ with the DSA carrying out both the training and testing.
I personally know a former Chief Driving Examiner (CDE) from local and national meetings I’ve attended, plus he used to live quite close till I moved, so I sent him an email outlining the above. I also pointed a response that the DSA had made to a Freedom of Information request.
My email to the former CDE;
Hi *****
You are aware that there was a meeting on 26th October 2012 between the ADI National Associations and the DSA.
During the meeting John Lepine commented that he had heard that the DSA were carrying out B+E training at Cardington on a commercial basis for the Highways Agency.
Rosemary confirmed this and said it was a one off for a sister agency.
I was wondering if all the training staff at Cardington were qualified driving examiners and if so, in my opinion then this would be a conflict of interest.
As you will be also aware the national associations monitor the freedom of information requests at the DfT with regards to DSA. On recent request the DSA answer was the following;
http://assets.dft.gov.uk/foi/dsa-ia0049612/dsa-ia0049612a.pdf
DSA examiners are not allowed to teach on a commercial basis as there would be a conflict of interests (and under the EU 3rd Directive examiners are explicated not allowed to also be instructors). Examiners are allowed to teach close family members with their line manager approval but we do not keep records of the numbers of examiners who have done this.
From this you can see why I consider there to be a conflict of interest.
One of our executive has written to the DSA with regards to the commercial aspect, but got a standard reply (go away it's none of your business).
From your time at DSA would the training staff be qualified examiners?