Fraud and Integrity Team (FIT) value for money or just an expensive publicity stunt?
Fit for purpose? I don’t think so.
The FIT is very expensive to run, however the DSA receive funding from the Department of Transport in the year 2012/2013 the figure of £3.456, 000 is quoted in a document we have. Much if not all of this is paid to an outside privately owned company for investigative services, this just as a retainer further charges are payable for any investigations.(The above figure comes from your taxes)
From the published figures DSA pay an outside investigation company £168,000 per month retainer.
Although the FIT investigate a few cases, very few are ever progressed to court, in most years this is a single figure.
Recently the FIT have been more proactive and a number of road side checks have taken place. Again very few if any illegal instructors were found, however a few qualified instructors had failed to display their green badge, this could in the future lead to a civil sanction; from the consultation this could lead to a fine in the order of £200 or more. Do you consider this fair?
Multi Purpose Test Centres (MPTC’s)
Yet another expensive white elephant.
MPTC’s came about as a result of a directive from the EU. The UK government decided in their wisdom that the swerve and stop element had to be undertaken off road because the required speed for the manoeuvre was deemed to be 50kph this equates to 31mph. The government of the day in conjunction with DfT and the DSA decided to implement the manoeuvre exactly as prescribed even though it was possible to adjust it slightly to take into account of any countries special circumstances.
With the above in mind the DSA borrowed a substantial amount of money from the DfT, the figure of £79 million has been quoted.
So what’s happened with regards to MPTC’s?
Some have been built and some are still in the pipeline, but there’s no money left. The whole point about the MPTC’s was as stated above for motor cycle testing and yet due to the small number of bike tests they are not cost effective, so car tests are having to subsidise the running costs.
What are the running cost after all the DSA borrowed the money to build MPTC’s, well the truth is the MPTC’s are leased at an extremely high cost.
I give you two examples of the annual lease costs;
Uxbridge £154,500
Birmingham GG £124,088.44
These are just the lease costs, plus we now have to add business rates, utilities and wages. An awful lot of tests need to be undertaken at these test centres to break even. With the DSA having a policy of trying to take the test to the public, such as Halfords and other private business premises what happens to MPTC’s? Well in the short answer is they will have reduced income and will eventually be a loss maker which could lead to a rise in test fees.
Many motor cycle instructors have been badly affected by the move to MPTC’s. Some now have to travel long distances just to reach a MPTC. This has greatly increased not only their costs but also those of the trainees. This also leads to an increase in the carbon foot print of the test centre.