Forged permits purge at Dover
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A MAJOR purge on forged international permits got under way this week when officers of the South Eastern traffic area swooped on Dover's Eastern Dock.
They mounted a full-scale permit and "related documentation" check on Wednesday and before the operation ended at midnight they expected to have examined almost 200 vehicles.
The inspection was the start of a permit clean-up, a Department of Environment spokesman said this week. "This is only the beginning of this operation.
"We will be stepping up these checks to stamp out the practice of using forged permits. It is getting Britain a bad name abroad."
The investigation, led by Mr H. Lee and Mr H. Mackie, was carried out under the powers invested in the DoE under the International Road Haulage Permit Act 1975.
As drivers assembled in the dock marshalling area before embarking on Townsend Thoresen and British Rail ferries bound for Zeebrugge, Ostend, Calais and Boulogne, the officers checked documentation against lists of permits issued by the International Road Freight Office in Newcastle.
They had a direct telephone link with Newcastle throughout the inspection. The full results of the inquiry will not be known until next week, but officers admitted that they were concerned that false permits were still being used. The spokesman for the DoE told CM before the inspection: "This is our first major exercise, although, acting on information received from a newspaper journalist we have carried out spot-checks in the past, but the information has always proved wrong. This time we are going in cold and systematically and will be examining the documentation of every British driver outwardbound from Dover."
During 1974 CM made frequent suggestions for legislation to be made to stop the use of false permits. When the Act came into force last year it did not go as far as we had proposed. We wanted the DoE to issue permits at the port of exit to specific operators against lists supplied by the IRFO. The DoE said it was unable to man such an operation.
On his trip to the Middle East last year, CM's deputy editor was shown permits which later were identified as false. Experienced examiners are able to identify false documents from the quality of the paper, its colour, the signature of the issuing officer and the seal of the country issuing the permit.
CM was in attendance throughout the inspection but went to press before its completion. Further details of the operation will appear in next week's issue.