SLROC Forum

I have been considering undertaking a recognised 4x4 off road driver training course and was looking for some advice or guidance from those of you who may have already done this.  The three main organisations that I have come across who run these certified courses are ; BORDA, LANTRA & NPTC.  What I have also found is there are huge differences in price depending on which of the above courses you do, the level of the course and the duration for example, 1/2 day using my landy on a standard certified course is £150 + vat(BORDA), one day £450 (LANTRA/ NPTC) or a two day certified course at £1200.00!  Are BORDA, LANTRA & NPTC 4x4 off road qualifications recognised equally by industry in relation to driving off road as part of your job or is there one qualification that is preffered.    Any help or guidance on this matter would be much appreciated.

Cheers in anticipation of your response

John

If you are looking at it for any sort of job then I would suggest ask the employer which they recognise or recommend

ask the employer which they recognise or recommend

   . . . and will pay for!

^^^^ Quite. I know of people who have spent over £10k on a "recognised off-shore safety" course, only to find that the prospective employer did not recognise them.

It might be interesting to look into the certification of these various bodies, who appear to have found a new source of money for old rope...
LANTRA I've heard of as offering a range of out-doorsy skills courses but who are the others and who gives them the right to set up as qualified experts ?

There are thousands of "Training" companies out there and all too many are snake-oil salesmen, leeching off the unemployed and redundant.   

Thanks for the input so far.  The purpose of the training is employment related, however I have no particular job or employer In mind at this moment in time.  My current employer seems.to favour Lantra but 1200 seems a tad on the expensive side when you consider that is more than most spend on learning to drive and I would have thought that training someone to drive off road is easier and requires less time/lessons therefore these prices to me are hard to justify.  Lantra are a land based industry training organisation, NPTC are the National proficiency training council again most commonly associated with the land based industries and BORDA are the British off-road driving association.  Rospa and the I.A.M also seem to be jumping on the bandwagon and are also rrunning course.  It seems a lot oc cash to pay only to find out later that the qualification May not be recognised by some employers / organisations.

I'd save my cash and write a CV/go into the interview prepped with a line about being an experienced off-road driver. If they push for a qual. then you can negotiate over who pays and what course is best !   

Interviewer: "Do you have any off-road qualifications"
Me: "Pieces of paper that say I can drive off road? No. However I do have nearly 20 years experience in Off Road driving competition: both as a competitor and an organiser. Won a few, lost many. Never broken a car or fallen over in a competition (yet)"

Think that would work?

Have you been involved in MudMaster? That's classed as a training exercise for the Armed Services, therefore one could claim (snake-oil fashion) that one has been involved in training the armed forces in off-road driving techniques

For anyone thinking of following the paper qualification trail (which is about 90% H&S anyway) another factor to consider is that these are not lifetime qualifications. Most have to be renewed after a couple of years - with further contributions to the snake oil fund required.