“Just remember this: in this country, they drive on the wrong side of the road.” Wag your finger and bellow that in your best cockney accent, and you will join the 56-year-old legion of Charlie Croker impressionists. Like almost all of Michael Caine’s lines from 1969’s ‘The Italian Job’, that one was written to be daft and infinitely quotable, but it could just as well be an opener for a UK driver familiarisation course. 

Designed for companies parachuting in employees from overseas, they take the form of short, instructor-led training sessions to acclimatise drivers to the idiosyncrasies of the UK road network. Beyond driving on the left, training providers have told us that road signs (mainly the sheer amount of them), roundabouts, speed limits, smart motorways and traffic levels are among the more common particularities to bamboozle those new to British highways. 

The courses are also increasingly popular. Red Driver Training’s head of marketing, Colin Paterson, tells Business Car the firm has experienced “a sort of doubling of UK familiarisation courses… very crudely, between 2024 and 2025”. He credits a portion to winning new business – particularly with pharmaceutical companies, said to be one of the main markets for the courses – but believes it is part of wider trend. 

“We’re sensing that people are being encouraged to the UK within companies to take up specialist positions that they can’t fill [with UK employees], and that’s when they need to get them through the courses.” 

it takes all sorts

The uptick is not limited to white-collar workers. We are used to reporting on the UK’s vehicle technician shortage, and the Institute of the Motor Industry believes the UK is looking at a shortfall of 3,000 technicians qualified to work on EVs by 2031, rising to 16,000 by 2035, but this industry is far from alone. In May, we counted 12 headline categories with the word ‘engineer’ in the job title – not including IT roles – on the government’s list of occupations eligible for a skilled worker visa, and many companies, from dealer groups to construction firms, are shopping abroad for technical talent. 

Altrad is a prime example. It works on major infrastructure projects, such as petrochemical plants and power stations, including the Hinkley Point C and Sizewell B nuclear sites, and recruits from countries such as Trinidad and Tobago and the Philippines.

“We put all our overseas drivers on a one-day driver training course,” says head of fleet Matt Hammond, also a board director at the Association of Fleet Professionals. “That involves a bit of a chat in the morning, then the instructor will take them out for three or four hours in the afternoon… it’s not so much to pass or fail them, more to bring them up to standard, although we have had instances where we have had to refuse people the right to drive because of the standards. We’ve probably been doing that now for about 12 months.”

Standards can vary wildly by country and developed nations tend to have the most stringent driving licence requirements. That is not to say new hires from, for example, the EU or the US need no training – all the specialists we spoke to told us they did – more to highlight the variance and the responsibility that comes with recruiting from across the globe.

“One of the biggest challenges is identification,” explains Nigel Lawrence, strategic partnerships director at Applied Driving. “We work with a utilities company, and they’re seeing an increasing number of people come into the country on assignment, and also natural growth in terms of recruitment of full-time employees who don’t hold a UK license. We’re seeing particular trends for African countries at the moment, where the driving is very, very different in the resident country in comparison to the UK.

“What typically happens is that organisations don’t ask the right questions at recruitment and induction… [and] a lot of companies just don’t ask at all, so they’re relying on capturing that information through whoever their [training] provider is. The risk is that employees might already have driven before we’ve had the chance to get them through that process.”

It is another element that applies to both blue- and white-collar employees. Jim Howard is an approved driving instructor with Roadwise Driver Training in Aberdeen, where the local oil industry is its chief market for UK familiarisation courses. Howard has trained drivers “from Nigeria, the States, Indonesia, Malaysia, Russia – all over the world”, and says scheduling is a consistent snag. 

“It all depends on when the company can fit them [employees] in to do it. Some will have been in the country for two weeks, and they’re out doing the road familiarisation straight away. Some of them have already been there three or four months. 

“Their guys often go offshore, and I’ve turned up at some companies at nine o’clock in the morning and they say, ‘I’m sorry, he’s offshore’. I’m thinking, ‘you’ve booked these sessions, and sometimes these guys are not getting one for six months’.”

Testing backlog

The amount of time employees spend in the country is hugely relevant. Overseas drivers with a licence from their home country or an international driving permit are legally required to have a UK licence after 12 months but driving test slots are in severely short supply. The pandemic created the initial backlog, but a shortage of examiners – plus online bots buying up and reselling test slots – have contributed. Citing DVSA data, BBC Verify said the average wait time reached 21.7 weeks in March, up from six weeks at the start of 2020, and that three quarters of Great Britain’s 319 driving test centres had hit the maximum wait time of 24 weeks for a practical test. 

Howard tells us he booked tests for pupils in April and the earliest available slots were late September, while Paterson says the wait times often catch out businesses and overseas employees alike. “People go on a UK familiarisation course, then think they’ll get their test under their belt and Bob’s your uncle,” he says. “You’re potentially going to have to schedule it six/eight/12 months in advance to actually acquire your driving licence.” 

“We know it’s coming, so we can build it in,” adds Hammond. “If we know there’s a three- or a six-month backlog, then we’ll get on it early. As long as they’re in the queue, we’re OK. We can take a cancellation and say, ‘we’ve got your slot next Tuesday, away you go’.”

An initial assessment to understand where new employees are from, their level of exposure to UK roads and how long they are expected to be in the country will pay dividends ahead of funnelling them training. 

Hammond explains his process: “They will arrive in the UK, come into our regional office facilities, do their induction, do all the paperwork and the on-boarding. We will then get the driver assessment done in that first week. 

“What we don’t want to do is send them off to wherever it might be in a van and then go, ‘actually, we shouldn’t let you drive it’. We find the best way of doing it is, if we’ve got a half dozen guys coming in together, we get them all at the beginning, and we can deal with it in those first two or three days.”

According to Lawrence, there are plenty of examples of companies skipping all the above and systematically handing overseas drivers a set of hire car keys. He advises asking whether employees need to drive at all. 

“Are we taking the best, first-case scenario, which is don’t drive?” he asks. “Sustainability-wise, public transport is better, and it’s also the best way to reduce the risk.”

Getting in early

Best practice comprises a risk assessment either before employees reach the UK or on arrival, familiarisation training before they drive for work and, for those even remotely likely to stick around for more than a year, appointments for their theory and practical driving tests on the double. When asked for advice to fleet operators about overseas employees, Hammond says they have “a personal responsibility” to ensure drivers are prepared for UK roads. 

“You have a responsibility – not just to your own drivers, to every driver on the road – to make sure your drivers are safe, are trained, are educated, and more importantly are confident. It’s easy to say, ‘it’s not my problem; it’ll be OK’, but ultimately, that driver’s driving one of your vehicles – that’s the biggest billboard you’ve got going down the road.

“I also want to think that, if that driver is behind my wife or my daughter, I’m confident that he’s going to stop when she stops.”

Hammond is a fleet manager and does not sell training courses, so can provide an objective opinion about whether they are a worthwhile investment. This is what he says. 

“We probably have about an 8% failure rate – that’s drivers who don’t meet the [course] standard, and we’ve had to refuse them the right to drive. For the ones that have been approved to drive, I don’t think we’ve had any incidents reported with any of them in the last 12 months at all. You were probably looking at about a 30% incident rate before that.”

Proof, if it were needed, that proper training helps to keep the bloody doors on.