Wednesday, February 25, 2015
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Production down slightly but prospects are looking good
CAR production slipped slightly last month but the motor industry expects vehicle manufacturing to bounce back with a venge- ance this year. There were 127,385 cars made in theUKin January 2015, a decrease of 1.2% compared with January 2014, the Society of Motor Manufacturers and Trad- ers (SMMT) said. “Vehicle manufactur-
Private car park overstay ines may be illegal, believes RAC
DRIVERSmay have been illegally charged many millions of pounds for overstays while parking on private land, according to the RAC Foundation. Some drivers have been threat-
ened with, and have paid, £100 for exceeding time limits, but the courts could see such payments as penalties and thus unenforce- able, the foundation said. RACFoundation director Professor
Stephen Glaister said: “Millions of drivers could be in line for a refund. We estimate that in 2013 alone driv- ers might have been overcharged by some£100 million.”
The foundation said that al- though the Protection of Free- doms Act 2012 banned clamping on private land, drivers who stay longer than the time they have paid for were still likely to receive tickets that demand payments of up to £100, and in some cases sig- nificantly more. However, in a paper for the foun- dation, barrister John de Waal QC argued that this is likely to be several times more than com- pensation for a genuine loss – so it would not be enforceable by the courts. Mr de Waal said: “Payments
at the level that operators presently demand as sanctions are unlikely to count as genu- ine pre-estimate of loss; they should be seen by the courts as penalties, which means they are unenforceable.” Mr de Waal also said that Euro-
pean consumer legislation which requires contracts to be fair means so-called “early payment discounts”, which are often used to put pressure on the public to pay up quickly or face a higher charge, are in fact unlawful be- cause they constitute a “price es- calation clause”.
ers have invested heavily in the UK in recent years to bring new models and technology to our facto- ries,” said SMMT chief ex- ecutive Mike Hawes. “The slight dip in output
in January is as a result of this investment as ma- jor UK car manufacturers begin production of new models. As production ramps up throughout the year, we expect to see the sector’s output increase.” The SMMT has also an- nounced that exports of cars to China have in- creased five-fold since 2009. In 2014, a total of 137,410 UK-built cars were export- ed to China, an increase of 14.5% over 2013. Only the UK bought more British- built cars than China last year. TheSMMTsaid the trend
in China reflected substan- tial growth in the wider
Asian market, with the number of UK-built cars exported to Asia having more than trebled in five years. In 2014, the UK exported 220,682 cars to the region, compared to 60,804 in 2009. Asia is now the UK auto- motive industry’s largest export market after Eu- rope, with 18.5% of all cars destined for the region.
In 2014 the automo-
tive sector represented a greater share of total UK exports than ever before, accounting for 11.2% of revenue, valued at £26.2 billion. The UK exported 1,195,190 cars to more than 100 countries worldwide last year, marking a 54.7% increase over 2009, when 772,210 cars were exported.
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