Truck parking at MSAs under threat
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by Amanda Bradbury • Planning rules which guarantee adequate LGV parking on motorway service areas (MSAs) are set to be relaxed.
There is now a risk that trucks could be barred from some service areas, says a spokesman for the MSA industry who has been in regular contact with the Department of Transport in the run up to the issuing of the planning guidelines.
The DOT refuses to comment on this correspondence, or on letters it sent to members of a British Hospitality Association committee which includes representatives from the MSAs.
BHA member and Blue Boar managing director Brian Wood says: "Provision for LGVs may not be as important for some operators in future. The Department may not be as strict in levels of facilities."
CM's source, who sits on the BHA committee and is also the director of a leading hospitality group, says the Government is keen to ensure that more services are built. He fears that this means the new planning guidelines could favour a new generation of smaller service areas.
These could be operated by new entrants to the market: fast food chains are known to be interested in developing sites along motorways.
Such chains are unlikely to want to bear the cost of providing adequate parking for LGVs, says Mark Woolfenden of the MSAs' political consultants, GJW.
The cost of providing a parking space for a truck is at least five times as much as that for a car, and as the LGV driver is usually alone he will spend less than a family. For one MSA operator LGVs are "the bottom end of the market". The planning changes could allow some of the 21 MSAs in the pipeline to be restricted to cars (CM 6-12 Jan). The new MSAs were last week being trumpeted by the Government as the result of deregulating the market. Existing motorway services could also scrap their provision for truck drivers if the conditions of operation are loosened.