IELTS General Training Reading Test 4: Free, with Answers

Do you have an idea that could save money, improve safety or make life easier for our passengers? Our suggestion scheme gives every employee the chance to put forward ideas for improvements.

Who can take part

The scheme is open to all permanent and temporary employees, with the exception of senior managers, whose jobs already involve looking for improvements. Ideas may be submitted by individuals or by groups of up to four people.

How to submit an idea

Suggestions should be made using the form on the staff website. Describe the problem you have noticed, explain your proposed solution and, if possible, estimate how much it would cost. Ideas that simply point out a problem without offering a solution cannot be considered. You will receive an acknowledgement within five working days.

How ideas are assessed

All suggestions are reviewed by a panel that meets every two months and includes representatives of drivers, engineers and office staff. You may be invited to present your idea to the panel in person, but you are not obliged to do so. The panel's decision is final.

Rewards

If your idea is accepted, you will receive a gift voucher worth £50. Where an idea leads to savings, the person who suggested it will also receive 10% of the money saved in the first year, up to a maximum of £5,000. Rewards for group suggestions are shared equally between the members of the group. Successful ideas are featured in the staff newsletter, unless you would prefer your name not to appear.

Recent successes

Ideas that have been put into practice in the past year include a clearer timetable display at the main bus station, which was proposed by a group of drivers, and a change to the way in which tyres are ordered, which has saved the company over £8,000 a year.

Ideas that are not accepted

If your idea is turned down, the panel will explain the reasons in writing. You may submit the same idea again after twelve months if circumstances have changed.

All business travel must be approved in advance by your line manager. Once approval has been given, bookings should be made through the company's travel agent, Corporate Journeys, rather than directly with airlines or hotels, as this allows the company to obtain discounted rates.

Travel

Rail journeys should be made in standard class, unless the journey lasts longer than three hours, in which case a first-class ticket may be booked. Flights within Europe must be booked in economy class. Staff who use their own car on business are paid 45p per mile, but they must have business insurance, and the cost of fuel cannot be claimed separately. Taxis should only be used when no public transport is available or when you are carrying heavy equipment.

Accommodation

Hotels should cost no more than £120 per night outside London and £180 per night in London, including breakfast. If you choose to stay with friends or family instead, you may claim a flat rate of £25 per night.

Meals

When you are away from your normal place of work for more than five hours, you may claim up to £10 for lunch. Evening meals are covered up to £30 if you are staying away overnight. Alcohol cannot be claimed under any circumstances.

Travelling abroad

If you are travelling outside the UK, check with the travel team at least four weeks before you leave whether you will need a visa. The company will pay for any vaccinations that are required, and you should take your company travel insurance card with you, as this covers medical treatment and lost luggage.

Claiming expenses

Claims should be submitted through the online expenses system within one month of the trip. You must attach a photograph or scan of every receipt, as claims without receipts will not be paid. Payments are made together with your monthly salary. If you need money before you travel, for example for a trip abroad, you can request an advance of up to £500 from the finance department.

On the first Saturday of every month, the community hall in Holbrook fills with an unusual collection of objects: toasters that no longer toast, lamps that refuse to light, a child's toy car with a missing wheel, a winter coat with a broken zip. Their owners wait patiently at a table by the door, where they fill in a short form describing the fault, before being directed to one of the volunteers who sit behind workbenches around the edge of the room. There is no charge for the service, although most visitors leave something in the donation box, which pays for the hire of the hall and for basic supplies such as fuses and thread. Nor is there any need to book: people simply turn up with whatever needs fixing.

The Holbrook Repair Café is one of thousands of similar events that now take place around the world. The idea originated in Amsterdam, where a Dutch journalist named Martine Postma organised the first Repair Café in October 2009 as a way of encouraging her neighbours to reduce waste. It proved so popular that a foundation was set up the following spring to help people in other places start their own, and the movement has spread steadily ever since. Since 2017, repair cafés around the world have also celebrated International Repair Day, which is held each year on the third Saturday of October. By 2016, there were more than a thousand Repair Cafés; today there are several times that number, in countries as far apart as Germany, Canada, Australia and India.

When Ruth Bennett, a retired librarian, first proposed a repair café to Holbrook's residents' association, she feared that she would be unable to find anyone willing to give up their Saturday mornings. 'I honestly thought it would be just me and a screwdriver,' she admits. In fact, a single notice in the local library brought offers of help from more than twenty people, among them a retired electrician, two dressmakers and a teenager who had taught himself to repair mobile phones. 'It turned out that the town was full of people with skills that nobody was making use of,' she says. Bennett is keen to stress that the café is not in competition with the town's two professional repair shops: when a job is too complicated for the volunteers, visitors are given the details of a local business that may be able to help.

The café has one rule that surprises many first-time visitors: owners may not simply hand over a broken item and come back later. Instead, they sit beside the volunteer and watch, and wherever possible they are invited to do part of the work themselves. 'The aim isn't just to fix the kettle,' explains Gareth Lloyd, the retired electrician, who has repaired several hundred appliances since the café opened. 'It's to show people that they can do it. Nine times out of ten, the fault is something simple, like a loose wire or a blown fuse, that anyone could put right with a bit of guidance.' Priya Shah, who had brought a reading lamp that had stopped working, was doubtful at first. 'I assumed I'd just be in the way,' she says. 'But Gareth talked me through it, and I replaced the switch myself. I can't tell you how pleased I was with myself.'

Not every repair succeeds, and the Holbrook volunteers estimate that they manage to fix around two-thirds of the items that are brought in, a proportion that they regard as encouraging given the age and condition of some of them. Each attempt, successful or not, is recorded in an online database shared by repair cafés around the world, which now contains details of hundreds of thousands of repairs. The records show which products break most often, what goes wrong with them and why some cannot be mended, and campaigners have used this evidence to put pressure on manufacturers and governments.

According to the volunteers, the most common reason for failure is not a lack of skill but the way in which products are made. Dr Owen Clarke, who lectures in product design at a nearby university, points out that many modern appliances are held together with glue rather than screws, so that they cannot be opened without being damaged. 'Spare parts are often unavailable, or so expensive that it makes more sense to buy a new item,' he says. 'Some products seem almost to have been designed to be thrown away.'

Governments have begun to respond. Since 2021, manufacturers of certain household appliances sold in the UK, including washing machines and refrigerators, have been required to make spare parts available to repairers for up to ten years. In France, many electronic products now carry a repairability score from 1 to 10, allowing shoppers to compare how easily different models can be mended. Clarke welcomes these changes, but he believes that attitudes will prove harder to alter than laws. 'For decades, we've been taught that when something breaks, you replace it,' he says. 'Places like Holbrook are quietly teaching people something different.'