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0-licence price hike will hurt
Page 14
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The DfT is ramping up the financial resources required of all 0-licence holders — the RHA has responded with a plea for flexibility. Guy Sheppard reports.
OPERA IORS WILL need much larger financial reserves when applying to renew or change their 0-licences from January next year.
The Department for Transport is raising the minimum financial guarantee needed for every vehicle added to a standard national licence by £1,000 to £3.400. And the minimum required for the first vehicle on a licence is rising from £4,300 to £6,200.
The changes are designed to bring the UK into line with European Union legislation, but the Road Haulage Association is alarmed at the implications for operators. Chief executive Roger King says: "It will hit them and it will hit them fairly hard. It is the overnight magnitude of the increase that concerns us.
King adds that financial guarantees can be bank overdrafts or separate bank accounts but these have to be ring-fenced against other uses.
-One of the things we would like to see is if cars could be considered as a part of the assets," he says. -Then if you did get into difficulty you could quickly sell them to solve the financial problem you have got the business into."
The RHA is writing to Transport Secretary Alistair Darling urging the government and Traffic Commissioners to be as flexible as possible when interpreting the new rules.
The financial guarantees required for international licences are rising to the same level as for standard licences. But the increases are much less severe because the existing requirements are much higher than for standard national licences.