Job security
This is a real career opportunity. We are a genuine driving school with a long-established and proven track record of success. We do not act as an agent for other driving schools nor are we an instructor training company masquerading as a driving school. With LDC you are not dependent upon a third party or a superficial un-proven driving school to secure your future career prospects. The company that is training you is the company that you will work with - a company with a proven and financially sound driving school business. If you are accepted you will be given a written Career Offer guaranteeing you a position with us before you commit to any training.
A job with a secure future
Over the last 10 years, driving instructors' workloads have increased dramatically. Changes that have added to their workload include the addition of the Theory Test, the retraining of driving offenders, the introduction of the Pass Plus training scheme to reduce insurance premiums (additional motorway lessons etc., backed by the government and insurance companies alike), the introduction of a more difficult driving test (i.e. the introduction of bay parking and more difficult routes), the introduction of the Hazard Perception test for learners and ADIs alike, and finally, the introduction of the “show me tell me” section of the driving test.
With the emphasis on “duty of care” and the possibility of directors being prosecuted for corporate manslaughter, companies are now taking corporate driver training much more seriously and are looking to the driver training industry to provide assessment and training schemes to safeguard their employees and reduce driving stress. These new schemes can also save companies many thousands of pounds in fleet insurance premiums. Consequently, over the next few years we expect a major increase for driver training services in the corporate area of the market place.
Insurance premiums to cover an additional learner driver on a standard motor car insurance policy have dramatically increased over the last few years forcing many parents to have their children trained professionally rather than doing it themselves, again benefiting our industry.
Finally, on the horizon there is talk of introducing compulsory retesting of drivers every 10 years and making it compulsory for all learners to take a minimum number of professional driving lessons. As society becomes more safety conscious, training is bound to feature even more. Therefore, the future for driver training could not be brighter.
The size of the learner driving market
According to the latest Government survey people learning to drive in the UK buy on average 52 hours of professional driving lessons (up from 31 hours in the previous government survey completed in 1998) and take on average 14 months to pass the driving test. This means on average each person learning to drive spends around £1,000 on professional driving tuition. With approximately 1 million people learning to drive each year this suggests a potential annual market size of around £1 billion.
With all the changes identified above and the increase in the number of professional hours taken by learner drivers you could be forgiven for believing there must now be a national shortage of driving instructors. However, this is not the case because the number of registered driving instructors in the UK has also increased over this period of time from around 30,000 to 44,000. Thus the number of instructors has easily kept pace with the increase in demand for driving lessons. Never the less the market is still very buoyant despite the recession but don’t be fooled into believing it is easy to be successful - it is not. The business is still very competitive and therefore the support you get from the driving school after you qualify is equally as important as the training you receive before. After all there is little point in investing all this money and several months of your time just to discover the driving school can not deliver the career opportunity it promised and your business fails.