THE Inland Revenue is to fund a driver training programme for its 900 car drivers through savings made by switching its fleet to a fast rotation cycle. Epping-based ATC Driver Training won the contract to train the Inland Revenue's drivers following a wide tender process.

Stan Ayling, the Inland Revenue's head of transport and travel, said: 'I think driver training has a lot of benefits for my drivers, not just on the insurance front, but also environmentally because it teaches them to drive cars properly, and in terms of caring for staff.' He added that the Inland Revenue already had a good accident claims record, but said there was always room for improvement.

Cost had been the previous obstacle to a widespread training programme, but Ayling has been able to plough back the running cost savings achieved by the Inland Revenue's switch to a fast cycle fleet policy into driver training. ATC will carry out the defensive driver training on a nationwide, one-to-one ratio of instructor to driver. Ayling now plans to switch the Inland Revenue's 700-pool car fleet on to the same replacement cycle, and use the savings achieved to train the most regular pool car drivers.