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Welcome to the West Lothian Driving Instructors Association website. This site is designed to function as an online newsletter for all driving instructors (ADIs and PDIs) who operate out of the Bathgate Driving Test Centre and are members of our Association. The function of the WLDIA (and therefore by extension this website) is to keep our members informed of:-

• Things happening in our working area that can affect us
• Things happening in the driving instruction industry as a whole
• Things happening in the motoring field in general
• Our schedule of meetings and social event

If you are not a member and are unsure if it is worth your while, have a look at this link, and have a look around the site to see what we are up to and about.

Successful June meeting with the DSA

At our June meeting our special guest was Mr Paul Appleby, Assistance Chief Driving Examiner for our area. This meeting was well attended with 65 members, new members and guests present. Also in attendance was Aenaes McRitchie of DISC. The main presentation by Paul was on the upcoming changes to the driving test, and although some of the things we were told are already in the public domain it was good to hear clear explanations of how things will work. The association would like to thank Paul Appleby, Tom Lindsay and Norman Geddes of the DSA for attending in their own time and making this a worthwhile night. In addition Aeneas McRitchie of DISC came to the meeting to talk about an upcoming Coaching conference in London, and also what his role is within DISC now.  Thanks to Matt McGhie for the photos shown here.  To the Right, Paul in mid-presentation and below is out committee and all our guests from the night. 

First Aid course is completed

The first aid course went ahead as planned on Monday 14th June, and as it turned out the WHOLE of the course was paid for from the delegates Individual Learning Accounts. The presenter, Fiona was VERY good. A former Army medic and former paramedic she has a wealth of real experience to draw upon, as well as a lot of funny stories. Some of the photos used to illustrate parts of the course were definitely not for the squeamish, but it was a really good course, which comes with an HSE (Health and Safety Executive) approved certificate. If enough people are interested (minimum 8) we can arrange another course. If you wish to do this course contact Ray Lynch (secretary) and apply for your ILA £200 grant if you haven't done so already. See item below. Photos of the day will be posted when I get time. 

Further training

It has been suggested to me that we might run some fairly short training seminars to help instructors with some of the less obvious aspects of our work. Specifically mentioned to me were:

• A presentation from an accountant of keeping your own books (what MUST be done, suggested ways of doing thing, possibly some recommended software and an idea of what driving instructors can expect to be able to claim and what they can forget about).
• A presentation on use of Microsoft Word.
• A presentation on the use of Microsoft Excell.

WestDrive 2010

The annual WestDrive event is coming up in August, 24th, 25th and 26th. As before the association plans to have a presence at this event. For those who have not attended before, West Drive is a multi agency road safety event, organised by Lothian And Borders Police. Every person in school attending 5th and 6th years are brought along. Generally a play is performed by the "Itsy Bitsy Theatre Company" showing the effects of reckless driving on a young couple. The youngsters are then free to tour various stands, including the DSA ( who do Driving Theory and the theory test), the Scottish Ambulance Service (talking about the injuries received by road collision victims (including GRAPHIC photos), the Fire Brigade (with photos of accidents in THIS area - last year they brought along a car in which 2 young people had lost their lives when it left the road in this area), the Police give a demonstration of high speed driving in a traffic car, the Road Safety unit demonstrate speed cameras (at least we know where one of them is for that day!), BSM tend to bring along a driving simulator.... and loads more. For driving instructors you will get a chance to meet a lot of youngsters and give out business cards while demonstrating a small manoevering area (dual controls ARE required). If you are interested speak to Hamish Lambert, you do not have to commit to all 3 days, in fact we hope to get enough instructors wanting to attend that we will be forced to limit attendance to 1 day each.

Individual Learning Accounts

Many of you will not be aware of how to apply for your £200 Individual Learning Account Grant. This grant is available to anyone who earns less than £22,000 (e.g. as a self employed person you declared less than that for taxable profit - that should be most of us). This money can be used to pay for a wide range of training, much of which can be used as CPD, such as the first aid course 9 of us attended at West Lothian College. For more details click this link.  I would STRONGLY recommend applying for this NOW as personally I would see this as an item for the government to remove when they bring in the massive cuts being promised.

Next Meeting

The associations next meeting is on Monday September 7th. This is likely to be back at Craigsfarm in Livingston. Any agenda points, please raise them with me as soon as possible.

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This page was most recently updated on 22/07/2010