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ISSUE 1 2010

FBJ New Police powers cut truck toll

FREIGHT BUSINESS JOURNAL

contacts 2010

SALES

JOHN SAUNdERS - publisher

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RAy GIRvAN

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EdITORIAL

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GILES LARGE

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MARTIN ROEBUcK

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cIRcULATION

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AdvERTISEMENT PROdUcTION

LORRAINE cHRISTIAN

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JENNy O’NEILE

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HEAd OFFIcE

FREIGHT BUSINESS JOURNAL

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Kent Police said that new powers allowing officers to take immediate action against transgressing foreign trucks appeared to have cut fatalities in the county. They said that there had been 34 collisions and 47 casualties between April and October 2009, compared with 43 collisions and 68 casualties in the same period in 2008. Under the new legislation, introduced under the Road Safety Act 2006 and launched in April 2009, officers can issue fixed penalty notices to offending foreign drivers and roadside fines of up to £900. Vehicles can also be taken off the road if the alleged offender cannot pay the fine immediately. Police also gained powers

to take defective vehicles off the road until they are repaired and to force truck drivers to take a rest break if they have exceeded their permitted driving times. Despite the apparent

success, an influential House of Commons group of MPs has called for truck safety inspectors to do more to address the risks to safety imposed by foreign trucks on UK roads. Despite accounting for only 3% of trucks in the UK, foreign lorries accounted for 10% of truck accidents, they said. In a report published on

3 March, the Public Accounts Committee said that it was “unacceptable” that the Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) inspectors had been barred from some ports, including Cairnryan and Stranraer, two critical entry points from Ireland. Twelve Quays in Birkenhead had also barred inspectors although similar problems in Liverpool had been partially resolved. Some ports’ lack of

hoped to gain access soon to all the ports concerned. It has already produced a draft memorandum of understanding on overall access requirements with the BPA, which was being shared with members. Detailed arrangements with each port would be agreed on an individual basis. The agency was also

looking at setting up check sites on major routes to and

believes that in the past, VOSA has tended to concentrate its activities on Dover rather than the Eurotunnel terminal, partly because the latter’s space and facilities are concentrated on the French side of the Channel. VOSA inspectors might face legal difficulties in operating he France, he suggested. “We’re not against VOSA

by any means,” he added, “but even law-abiding truck operators might avoid a port if they think there is a bigger chance of being stopped, simply because they see they see less chance of being delayed by an inspection.” The PAC also said that

cooperation was because of a lack of space to inspect large trucks, but in some cases it was because the inspectors’ presence was perceived as a customer deterrent. However, VOSA said that

it was negotiating with the British Ports Association and

from ports, which in some cases would be a better alternative where space was tight.

Dover’s director of

operations, Robin Dodridge, said that the port was keen to work with the BPA and the UK Major Ports Group. He

Port planning policy ‘unsound’

The Government’s new Infrastructure

Planning

Commission (IPC) has got off to a less-than-encouraging start, at least as far as ports are concerned. A House of Commons Transport Committee report published in March was highly critical of the proposed planning framework for the industry, saying it was based on unsound data and wrong assumptions. The Government vowed

to streamline planning for major schemes following a number of excruciatingly long and expensive public enquiries, including those for Heathrow Terminal 5 and the Dibden Bay container terminal near Southampton. This led to the IPC being set up last October. However, the report said that the National Policy

Statement on Ports, which is supposed to underpin port planning under the new system, had been rushed, was deeply flawed and based on out of date assumptions. Parliamentary scrutiny had also been cut short, it said. It was based an an interim

ports policy published in 2007, before the recession began to bite. It was supposed to be updated, but this did not happen. The committee questioned the robustness of the forecasts, drawn up on the basis of 2005 figures at the height of the economic boom, pointing out that container traffic had since declined. It recommended that the Department for Transport urgently commission new forecasts. The committee described the NPS as “not fit for purpose”

and said that its designation should be put on hold until other policy statements on land transport had been produced and until the Government had consulted the newly-formed Marine Management Organisation. The committee also called for ports planning to be properly integrated with that for rail and other land transport. It also warned that

an inadequate NPS could lead to future planning decisions being challenged by judicial review and lead to uncertainty, cost and delay – the very things the new planning system was designed to eradicate. An ABP spokesman said he doubted whether the new system would have improved the Dibden Day planning enquiry process.

VOSA should urgently be given better access to HM Revenue & Customs information on vehicles arriving in the country. Despite several years’ negotiations, VOSA had still not obtained access to the HMRC Freight Targeting Database and said that, if necessary, the respective P e r m a n e n t Secretaries should take action to ensure that this happened. VOSA told the committee that it had been diverted from the negotiations with HMRC by other matters. VOSA told FBJ

11

that negotiations with the UK Border Agency were now well developed and it planned to introduce data exchange arrangements later this year. “Once in place, VOSA’s enforcement officers will have access to information in advance of HGVs disembarking in ports.” The report continued that,

while VOSA has had some success with a three-year initiative launched in 2008 to target the most high risk vehicles, there was no word from DfT on what, if anything, would replace the High Risk Traffic Initiative when it finished in 2011. However, VOSA said that

its officers had been able to gather intelligence from the vehicles it had stopped during the three-year initiative and it would increasingly use the data gathered to identify foreign trucks posing the greatest risk. Page 1  |  Page 2  |  Page 3  |  Page 4  |  Page 5  |  Page 6  |  Page 7  |  Page 8  |  Page 9  |  Page 10  |  Page 11  |  Page 12  |  Page 13  |  Page 14  |  Page 15  |  Page 16  |  Page 17  |  Page 18  |  Page 19  |  Page 20  |  Page 21  |  Page 22  |  Page 23  |  Page 24  |  Page 25  |  Page 26  |  Page 27  |  Page 28  |  Page 29  |  Page 30  |  Page 31  |  Page 32  |  Page 33  |  Page 34  |  Page 35  |  Page 36
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