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Finance houses get a final warning about impounding
Page 16
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A Traffic Commissioner has yet again warned 'inance houses that they must get their act together over impounding legislation—or face losing their trucks.
Although West Midland TO David Dixon authorised the return of three impounded trucks to their finance house owner, Commercial Vehicle Finance, after they had been seized for being operated without an 0-licence, he warned that the outcome would have been different if the six-month amnesty for finance houses to get their houses in order had expired.
In all, eight trucks were seized while being used by UK Plant & Haulage Management. A decision on the return of the remaining five units has been adjourned to early September.
For the finance house, solicitor James Baird said that the company had not known and could not have been deemed to know that UK Plant & Haulage did not have a valid 0-licence.
However, a new system had been in place since 13 June whereby funds were not released until proof had been produced that the customer had a valid 0-licence.
The TC said that as UK Plant & Haulage had never had an 0licence there could not have been a great deal of care in checking the firm when the vehicles were initially leased out. But Baird said that Et was a condition of the contract that the necessary licences were held.
Commercial Vehicle Finance representative Sophie Garner said that the impounding regulations were not in force at the time the agreements with UK Plant & Haulage were entered into. She argued that there was no inclusion of "imputed knowledge" in the regulations and the requirement for finance companies to take steps to find out if customers were properly licensed seemed to be going beyond the regulations.
Dixon said that the view that he and his fellow TCs had taken was that finance houses could not rely upon lack of knowledge by "burying their heads in the sand forever; companies that owned and leased vehicles out had to take proper steps to see that the people they were leasing them to had valid 0-licences, otherwise it would make a mockery of Parliament's will in passing the impounding legislation.
The point had been made that these agreements had been entered into before the regulations came into force, but TCs were not prepared to wait for three years before steps were taken by leasing companies to find out whether existing customers had valid 0licences.