Licence delays 'crippling tourism'

Blair Anderson says putting six drivers on average through the P licence process each year costs around $6000. Photo / Alan Gibson

Frustrated tourism operators say their industry is being crippled by a lengthy process forcing seasonal staff to wait months to get special driver licences.

With the busy summer tourism season ramping up, furious businesses have approached the Weekend Herald over the wait time to get passenger endorsement licences, known as P endorsements, for workers to drive clients.

That problem was being compounded by a lag caused by police vetting in areas such as migrant applicants and child safety checks.

Coromandel Adventures operator Willie Lochore said in some cases it was taking between 65 and 70 days before his workers were being cleared.

The resulting staff shortage had forced him to scrap his December honeymoon plans so he could cover shifts.

P endorsements are mandatory for anyone driving a passenger service.

Gaining one involved completing a course and meeting a list of other requirements, before filing an application that took between six and eight weeks to process, according to NZTA.

Police vetting is also required to check on some applicants, and Mr Lochore said a new component under the recently introduced Vulnerable Children Act had pushed his wait time out to 11 weeks.

The tourism industry was especially vulnerable to the problem, he said, because it often relied on new and often migrant workers to come on board for seven months of the year.

But about half that time could be spent waiting for sign-off, costing the company and the worker.

His small company had already lost two drivers this year because they couldn't wait three months to get road-ready.

"It's really screwing our industry over," he said.

A worker at another Coromandel tour company who lodged an application in July wasn't cleared until mid-October.

Blair Anderson, director of Tauranga adventure park Waimarino, said the process also came with a heavy cost. Putting an average six drivers through the process each year cost him around $6000.

"We're lucky to be starting to get new workers this early.

"But still, if I was to put in an application and pay for their licence now, it wouldn't be until February or maybe even March that it was processed."

Tourism Industry Association chief executive Chris Roberts was aware of people missing out on jobs and some operators being unable to run tours.

The association had met with police and NZTA to discuss the problem and extra resources had since been arranged to tackle the application backlog.

NZTA delivery manager Robyn Elston said a recent lag had been caused by delays in police vetting results being received, and staff were processing around 500 applications per week - about double the normal demand.

But a backlog at Police Vetting Services had now been cleared, with the average processing time now below the agreed service level of 20 working days.

It came after police and NZTA put a new system in place that gave priority to new applicants and those renewing their endorsements.

Ms Elston said what was still a paper-based process would soon be digitised and centralised, reducing timeframes, providing better information and resulting in fewer follow-up inquiries.

NZTA was now further investigating whether any other changes could be justified to improve processing times.

But Mr Roberts said delays in getting P endorsements for migrant workers still might continue.

"The law requires overseas drivers to provide police checks from the country where they had been living - and neither the NZ Police or NZTA can do anything about delays that may occur in offshore jurisdictions," Mr Roberts said.