The Road Haulage Association has been invited to meet Treasury officials next month to discuss funding for driver training.
Chief executive Richard Burnett said: “We are asking that funding of up to £3,000 per person be made available and paid directly to the thousands of hauliers who are currently desperate for drivers. There have been suggestions that a loan system may be an option but we have told the government this would be a poor second best option.
“We need to break the pattern that has seen the UK under-invest in HGV driving skills and become far too reliant on drivers from Eastern Europe. These critical factors that have resulted the current shortage of drivers and, if not urgently addressed, will cause a bad situation to get much worse.”
