All businesses run in financial year form, so it's Apr 26 - Apr27As it says 2026/2027 it's written, I'm hoping, like it means FY, rather than CY.
We can all hold out hope that A) the feb course isnt fully filled yet. B) someone drops out, or C) they reopen courses once the initial GBR takeover happens. You never knowYes unfortunately not in this instance. GWR recruitment were specific that there are no plans to run further courses in 2027. However, they did say that can change, so keep hopeful and positive, but work on the basis that it’ll be 2028.
We have all got this far, some still to complete DMI, so I hope everyone can wait longer, however disappointing it is right now.
Think of the positives… we all won’t have to watch our weight at Christmas!
That and the government want to hire thousands more train drivers within a certain time frame. I can see GBR making Sundays a working day in the future, however, that all depends on the unions tooYes, there’s probably some truth in that. There’s a lot to consider, plus UK and global economies are taking a bit of a hit, which will affect public purses. And, GWR are experiencing a bit of train trouble which is probably quite costly to fix too - although I don’t know if that burden of cost falls on GWR or Hitachi, or both.
The truth is, it’s all speculation. It may just be as simple as more people are in the talent pool than expected, so places were filled and less people are retiring than expected, so less spaces to fill.
We probably want GWR to mandate Sunday’s if we want things to speed up. That is likely to produce more retirements and more gaps in the workforce.
Does that mean they'll pause recruitment overall and not advertise for trainee drivers for a while then do you reckon?I know that you are hoping for a change but the reality is that on GWR, Sundays are still not in the working week and fewer people are retiring. Net result lots of trainees, no additional hours to resource and a current surplus of drivers for the actual requirement. I get the feeling this is going to keep going for a while yet as the Sunday working agreement has just been extended again.
Has this kind of thing happened before? Where they say everything is full but then run new couses anyway.You have to remember that GWR has an access to pool of already qualified train drivers, so they can add drivers in short period of time as well, but I wouldnt worry about it much. Courses will run as they always have run in the past. Its railway. Recruitment is the worst part about the job.