The fuel supply ‘crisis’ rumbles on despite  the government suggesting everything is going back to normal.

It comes on top of issues of empty shelves in supermarkets, gas supply problems and price increases. The stark realities of supply and demand are only set to get worse – farmers, builders, hospitality, the list goes on. You can add driving instructors to that.

A roads

Though the ‘B’ word dare not be mentioned, Brexit is proving to be a huge factor in the supply of goods and services. This has been exaggerated by the pandemic, but the ‘just in time’ supply network we have grown used to over the last two to three decades is struggling to supply the needs of the UK. It will undoubtedly require time, patience and a lot of goodwill in order for this country to reboot.

The petrol/diesel issue is particularly difficult to avoid if your work involves driving.

Fiona Clarke, owns her own driving school. She is also on the Governing Committee of the Approved Driving Instructors National Joint Council (ADINJC). In an article in the Express, she criticises those who top up their tanks unnecessarily. Stockpiling has become the default UK reaction to a panic.

Brimming the tank

Ms Clarke, from Northamptonshire, described to Express.co.uk how difficult the choices have been for her to face in calculating when and who she can teach since the fuel shortage hit.

She asked: “How do I tell my pupils whether or not we’ve got lessons for the rest of the week?”

Ms Clarke described how she has to make judgement calls on which pupils she can teach on a day because of hard-to-come-by fuel supplies.

“I’ve had to send all my pupils messages to say I have fuel to get through today,” she says. “But I don’t know if I can get through the rest of the week.

“I’ve got two pupils who are due to start working with me on Friday – they’re new pupils.

“They’ve been waiting four months to start, and I’ve had to send them both messages to say, ‘at the moment, I have enough fuel to get me to Thursday lunchtime.

“I might not be able to have enough fuel to get you started on Friday.’”

Part of this picking and choosing of pupils, Ms Clarke continued, is how close a student is to taking their driving test.

She said candidly: “I’ve got to prioritise my test pupils. I have to, because those are the people who potentially have had their test put back because of lockdown one, lockdown two, tiering, lockdown three.”

“Some of my pupils have been with me since March 2020 and have had their tests or their training postponed and interrupted.

“We are now at the point where it feels like it’s getting back to normal and we can process and get on with everything nicely,” she added.

Testing times

But now, she has to constantly consider whether she has enough fuel to support her students closest to their examination date.

She said with audible frustration: “That fuel is sitting in somebody’s driveway somewhere, because somebody has panic-bought.

“That car is potentially not going to move all week because they’ve got nowhere to go.”

The uncertainty around fuel supplies is the latest bad news for driving instructors in what has been an incredibly disrupted year and a half.

She told Express.co.uk: “Driving instructors have been prohibited from working for eight of the last twelve months.”

She added: “If my wheels aren’t turning, I’m not earning any money.”

Desperate times

She described the anxiety involved in not knowing how to earn money when she was banned from working. She ended up working thirteen-hour days in a Covid-19 testing facility to support her family.

Despite this, she clarified that she wasn’t blaming people for crumbling to the instinct to panic-buy fuel.

She sighed: “I just wish that people who didn’t need it would acknowledge the fact that they don’t need it.”

Once the ‘petrol crisis’ stabilises, we’ll find ourselves well on the road to Christmas.  The turkey industry as already stated the lack of foreign workers means there will be a severe lack of British turkeys, not to mention spouts and toys. Looks like the bumpy road stretches a long way ahead.

You can read the Express with Fiona Clarke article here.