HGV skills gaps don’t just affect your workforce.
they affect your business.
Find the skills solution to keep your workshop productive, your vehicles moving and your workforce ready for what’s next.
Recruiting skilled HGV technicians is becoming increasingly challenging. At the same time, workshops need to manage capacity, maintain compliance, keep up with evolving vehicle technology and get the most from the people they already have.
The right skills strategy can help you tackle those challenges head-on.
what’s holding your HGV operation back?
Skills shortages rarely stay as an HR problem.
When the right technical skills aren’t available, the impact can be felt across your operation.
Can’t recruit the technicians you need?
Experienced HGV technicians can be difficult to find, leaving vacancies open and putting additional pressure on your existing team.
The result can be increased recruitment costs, longer hiring processes and valuable workshop capacity going unused.
Struggling to make the most of your workshop capacity?
When you don’t have enough people with the right skills, your existing facilities and equipment can’t always operate at their full potential.
The workshop material supplied for this campaign highlights recruitment costs, lengthy hiring processes, absence and under-capacity ramps as significant business challenges.
Have skilled people, but not enough HGV capability?
You may already have technicians with transferable skills within your business.
The opportunity could be to develop those skills rather than starting another recruitment search.
Need to strengthen inspection and maintenance capability?
Effective maintenance relies on competent people and robust inspection processes. DVSA guidance states that safety inspectors must be technically competent, trained in vehicle examination, diagnosis and reporting, and have a sound understanding of the relevant inspection requirements.
Preparing for a more technology advanced fleet?
The vehicles your technicians maintain are evolving. Your workforce needs to evolve with them.
don’t just fill the gap. build the capability.
There are different ways to tackle an HGV skills shortage.
Sometimes you need to bring new talent into the industry.
Sometimes the answer is already within your workforce.
And sometimes your team needs targeted technical development to keep pace with changing requirements.
The right solution starts with understanding the challenge.
build your future workforce
What if you could develop the technicians you need?
Recruiting an experienced technician can solve an immediate vacancy.
Developing your own talent can help you build a longer-term pipeline of people who understand your operation, your standards and your vehicles.
Our heavy vehicle apprenticeships provide routes for businesses to develop new technicians through structured workplace learning and specialist training.
Our Level 2 Bus, Coach & HGV Service & Maintenance Technician apprenticeship provides an entry route into the industry, while the Level 3 Heavy Vehicle Service & Maintenance Technician develops more advanced technical capability across maintenance, inspection, diagnostics and key vehicle systems.
The supporting material for this campaign reinforces the value of developing apprentices around the needs of the business, including building future skills and longer-term workforce capability.
The commercial opportunity
Instead of continually asking:
“Where can we find an experienced HGV technician?”
you can start asking:
“How can we develop the technician our business needs?”
turn the skills you already have into HGV capability
Your next HGV technician could already be in your workshop.
Not every skills gap needs to be solved through external recruitment.
If you have qualified light vehicle technicians within your business, they may already have valuable knowledge and experience that can be developed for heavy vehicle work.
Our Light to Heavy Vehicle Upskill programme is designed to help Level 3-qualified light vehicle technicians develop the skills needed to inspect and maintain large commercial vehicles.
The five-day programme covers areas including HGV legislation, air brakes, suspension, emissions and inspection techniques, with assessment leading to IRTEC Heavy Goods Vehicle Inspection Technician accreditation.
More flexibility across your workshop team.
Greater internal capability without relying solely on external recruitment.
A faster route to developing HGV skills from an existing technical foundation.
Better use of the talent you already have.
keep your technical workforce ready for what’s next
Your vehicles are changing. Your skills strategy needs to change with them.
That means maintaining a strong workforce isn’t simply about filling today’s vacancies. It’s about ensuring your technicians continue to have the knowledge and competence your operation will need tomorrow.
For experienced technicians, our wider HGV offer includes routes such as IRTEC service maintenance assessment, advanced technical assessment and specialist emissions training.
These opportunities can help businesses validate existing expertise, develop specialist capability and support continued professional development.
Because the cost of a skills gap isn’t just the cost of training.
It’s the impact that gap can have on productivity, workshop capacity, vehicle availability and your ability to respond to changing demands.
a skills strategy built around your business
There’s no one-size-fits-all answer to an HGV skills challenge.
Your priority might be to:
Build a pipeline of future technicians
→ Develop new talent through HGV apprenticeships.
Increase your HGV capability
→ Develop transferable skills within your existing workforce.
Strengthen inspection standards
→ Build practical inspection competence and recognised accreditation.
Develop experienced technicians
→ Maintain and advance technical capability.
Prepare for future vehicle technology
→ Keep your workforce’s skills moving alongside your fleet.
The solution might involve one of these approaches, or a combination of them.
That’s why we start with your challenge, not a course.
more than HGV training
Our HGV capability spans apprenticeships, technical upskilling, inspection training and industry-recognised accreditation, with delivery available through specialist academies or on-site nationwide, depending on the programme.
So whether you’re starting with a recruitment problem, a capability gap, a compliance requirement or a future skills challenge, we can help you identify the right route forward.
start with the challenge.
we’ll help you find the solution.
Tell us what’s happening in your workshop or fleet.
Whether you’re struggling to recruit, need to develop existing technicians, want to improve inspection capability or simply want to understand where your workforce needs to go next, our team can help you identify the most appropriate training solution.