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VOSA vow to target foreign trucks is 'a decade too Late'
Page 16
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CM COVER STORY By David Harris
A BUSINESS LEADER in North Wales says that VOSA's pledge to clamp down on faulty foreign trucks is being implemented more than a decade too late.
Gwyn Evans, chairman of the North Wales Federation of Small Business, says that hauliers have been telling VOSA and the police for at least 15 years that foreign trucks have been running illegally, but very little has been done to improve the situation.
Evans, who runs Gwyn Evans Commercial Vehicle Repair and Recovery, adds: "It annoys me that VOSA and the police are now pumping out this new policy to the British public as if they were acting quickly. They've let foreign hauliers get away with running illegally for years, putting them at a competitive advantage to British hauliers."
Evans says that while British hauliers have had to contend with increasing bureaucracy and red tape, some foreign trucks have been allowed to come to the UK fully laden with fuel and flout all sorts of safety regulations.
A House of Commons Transport Committee report said last month that foreign trucks were eight times more likely to be in a more dangerous condition than their British counterparts.
The recommendation by the committee that VOSA do more to check foreign vehicles at their point of entry into the UK has been widely welcomed by the haulage industry, and VOSA chief operating officer Alex Fiddies said at the time that the agency was working with port authorities to try to establish direct access to trucks as soon as they came off of ferries ('VOSA must plan route to foreign HGV compliance', CM 27 August).
Evans says he would also like to see VOSA publish more detail on the faults that are found on foreign trucks, so the nature of noncompliance becomes clearer.