Carly Brookfield, Head of Marketing, DIA, Shares all on New DSA CEO, Alastair Peoples.

Alastair Peoples

Having worked with a lot of new CEOs, across a variety of both public and private sector organisations over my 20+ years in business, I was probably surprisingly more cynical than those other Association heads in the room last Wednesday (when we met Mr Peoples, our new regulatory Chief at the DSA) who've had their reasons to doubt the DSA's leadership over the many years that they've worked in the driver training profession. Whilst I don't have the history of disappointment my colleagues have experienced through successive regime and regulator changes in the industry over the years, I do have the experience as a Communications professional (especially one who's prepped many a new CEO or Minister going into a room with a new set of stakeholders or employees for the first time) to spot spin with no real substance, promises made to improve relationships with no real intent to follow through. 

However, I was pleasantly surprised. Mr Peoples began by establishing his credentials in the driver training sector, having been an Examiner at one time - unlike his predecessor he does have some useful on the ground experience of the services he is now responsible, and the customers (both the trainer and the pupil) he is keen to improve DSA services for. He also gave us an honest and open appraisal of the challenges faced with VoSA, the agency he has managed for the last 7 years and which he now has the mammoth task of merging with DSA. I'm impressed with the strategic approach he took to tackle those issues at VoSA and the hard decisions he had to take to steer an agency with severe financial issues (a deficit of £47 million) and vast operational challenges back to health. Setting VoSA an ambitious, but not unrealistic, five year development plan, in year 4 he'd brought the agency back to financial health (by streamlining operations, making key efficiency savings by using outsourcing and working closely with private sector operators) and vastly improved the operations of the agency, increasing its ability to deliver. 

Annual DSA Meeting with National Driver Instructors Associations  

He was keen to impress upon us, that although he will now embark upon designing a similar five year business plan for the development and improvement of DSA, the agency does not have the same level of problems he faced at VoSA. And in many respects he acknowledged the agency operates well. However, he was keen to have a continuing and open dialogue with key stakeholders like the National Associations and their membership as to what could be improved. Even cynical moi felt he was genuine in that desire to build a better relationship with driver trainers in order to both develop the profession, and what it offers to its customer, as well developing what the DSA offers to both the trainer and the pupil. 

Whilst he listened intently to the challenges and issues we as associations felt were posed by the agency to our professional members (and took away 'to-do's' for himself, Registrar Mark Magee and Chief Examiner Lesley Young, to focus on), he didn't shy away from turning some of those challenges back to us, and from setting us new ones. I'm personally a big fan of that approach, and my colleagues at the other National Associations (bless them for their patience) did have to put up with me as Chair for most of the AM, throwing challenges back to ourselves as to how we could help resolve problems in the profession, rather than looking for someone else to equally blame and make responsible for the solutions. We did, however, collectively come up with more positive and proactive ideas by working this way, than previous meetings I've attended in the industry where some would rather sit, complain and blame than empower themselves to find and present solutions, focus and progress. 

As he builds his business plan, Mr Peoples asked us to put our heads together and come up with one big idea or initiative we felt would really improve DSA's provision to either trainers or our pupils. Now, that's not to say they're not interested in progressing a number of key initiatives we clearly need to them to focus on, or resolving a number of key issues we already know and constantly point out need more work. The focus here though is to seize an opportunity whereby we can really make a big impact or a sea change. 

The National Associations will meet again over the next few months, and continue to get our heads together regularly in the long run, indeed we proposed the creation of a new National Associations Steering Group at this meeting and my colleagues at the other associations willingly embraced the opportunity to work together more regularly and more effectively. The 'one big idea' will be firmly on our agenda at these meetings, and at DIA generally. In fact DIA was already thinking along the same lines, with the drafting of a report in response to the forthcoming Green Paper having been a key focus over the last few months, in which we detail the views of over 5000 driver and rider trainers on how we should develop learning to drive and propose solutions as to how we believe we can create positive change (we will release that report to members, key policy makers like DfT/DSA, the media and other stakeholders shortly, watch this space). 

We'll keep you appraised of our thoughts on this, but in the meantime I'd you to think about the big, impactful changes which could be made to either improve the way DSA works, or how we work as a profession (i.e. it could be the way we train and qualify as driver/rider trainers, or the way learning to drive is taught, examined and monitored on the whole). My challenge to you is much the same as Mr People's to us - think big, and communicate what big change you want to see happen, mindful of making a good business case for the change. We can all dream big but the biggest challenge is making the big dreams work in reality. Email me at carlybrookfield@driving.org with your thoughts and ideas. 

We look forward to hearing more on Mr People's vision for the DSA and driver training profession at our Professional Development Day in the next few weeks. Those attending, start thinking of your big ideas and questions for him now. If you haven't managed to get a ticket (as sadly due to the popularity of this event we have now sold out, though similar workshop events are planned for early next year) we're looking to film his and Mark Magee's session and will publish that to the website after the event but please also send me your ideas and questions in advance. We'll cover more of his presentation at the event, and of our first meeting with him, in the December issue of Driving Instructor.