Transport User Voice December 2024 – Chief Executive’s editorial

28 November 2024

We want our work to matter

We had an all-colleague event in Wolverhampton earlier this month. A lot of us joined the organisation recently so it was nice to get everyone together and there was a great buzz as friendships and connections started to be made.  

We devoted one of sessions to agreeing our organisational values and let it be entirely led by colleagues: whatever values proved most popular would be the new values of the organisation.  

One of the top choices was “positive change” and this resonated strongly with me. We’re an organisation that could easily shout and throw its weight around, but what came through was our commitment to making a difference. 

It is tempting to want to get in the news all the time, and often we will, but that’s not why we go to work in the morning. We want our work to matter. 

Why am I telling you all this?  

It should give you a sense of how we’re approaching our work, such as the report on lorry driver rest stops that features in this month’s edition. 

We rely on lorry drivers for everything from keeping supermarkets stocked to getting our parcels delivered, but we tend to only think about them when there’s a problem such as during the pandemic.  

Our report shows there is a big problem affecting lorry drivers now and the risk that it will make recruitment and retention of them even harder in future. Lorry drivers deserve better and more widely available rest stops. But rather than stop there having described the problem, we are bringing together everyone with an interest in it to develop solutions.  

We’ll keep you posted on how that’s going. 

Enjoy the read. 

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