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@Dammit
But that wouldn't solve the problem - because there's four weeks for the medical, three weeks for your provisional licence to come back, then four weeks of training, book the test, wait another four weeks etc etc.
Which is why Tesco is offering a bonus of £1,000 to entice drivers - they don't want to train new ones, they want to take (say) refuse truck drivers from the local council right now, and then pay them the same rate as before.
The other element to consider is that you need to either pay for the three months it takes to "make" an HGV driver, or offer pay that is attractive enough that the wannabe driver takes that on themselves - and median pay is what, £11.90/hour right now? How high do you need to make that for someone to jump through all the hoops - £20, 25? And then who takes that loss - the Supermarkets are not going to want to, so that puts it on the logistics company who are already on (per the article) very thin margins.
Yes, pay needs to go up and yes, conditions need to improve - but none of this is going to fix it at once.