Yuill claims victimisation for 'purely political reasons'
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• Jimmy Yuill, managing director of Yuill and Dodds in Strathaven, Lanarkshire, says he is being victimised for "purely political reasons". His local council has twice blocked attempts by the company to extend its operating centre — and Yuill claims it is because they don't like the fact that I moved coal during the miners' strike".
Yuill and Dodds became well known during the bitter, yearlong miners' strike in 1984/5 for running convoys of its grille-protected trucks with coking coal from the Hunterston terminal on the Clyde to the Ravenscraig steelworks. Now, says Yuill, Labour-controlled East Kilbride District Council is still making
life difficult for the company. He wants to buy a plot of derelict land next to his 6,000m2 operating centre in Greystone Place, Strathaven, mainly to give his 82
employees somewhere to park their cars.
"We've been here for 14 years," says Yuill, "and the piece of ground next to us has been empty for most of that."
The council has not refused to sell him the land, which is owned by the East Kilbride Development Corporation, but has instead sought to impose restrictions on Yuill's entire operation.
"When they offered me the land the council said we could have it if we agreed only to use it between seven in the morning and seven at night, five days a week — but the worst of it was they wanted us to agree to the same operating restrictions in the rest of the yard. I just couldn't operate on that basis," he says.
Yuill has never had operating restrictions before. "We are the biggest employer in the area by far," says Yuill, with 82 employees on the books. "The majority of factories round here employ less than 20 people each." He is angry that he is being held back for what he considers to be spurious political reasons.
Yuill believes that the council's planning department recommended permission to take over the land on both of his previous requests, but that the planning committee rejected its officers' recommendations. He also believes that the local police force will support his case at the next meeting of the council's planning committee sometime this month. Yuill can see no logical reason for the council to block his moves.
Yuill and Dodds' yard, when full of the company's trucks, has no room for car parking at all and the majority of the company's employees park in surrounding streets.
According to Yuill: "If the council wants to put 82 people on the dole, it is going the right way about it. I'm fed up with the hassle:"