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Call the register
Page 18
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• by Brian Weatherley
The Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency (DVLA) and the Vehicle Inspectorate (VI) are moving closer to a registration scheme for UK trailers. The DVLA is expected to issue a consultation document in the next couple of months, suggesting that all relevant trailers are registered by 2004.
The Commercial Trailer Association (CIA) and SMMT expect the scheme will initially apply to virtually all trailers over 3.5 tonnes. Both organisations have long campaigned for successive governments to accept the idea—the UK is the only country in Europe that fails to register trailers from new."
The SMMT says: "UK trailer registration should help crime reduction and road safety. It should also help the growing numbers of international drivers who face delays from disbelieving continental police wanting to know why their trailers are not registered."
The move has been welcomed by a number of trailer makers. Don Burton, chairman and founder of Don-Bur trailers, says: ''It's one of those things that's got to happen. But it all depends on what red tape they tie around it and there's enough red tape around as it is.
But it doesn't bother me, we regularly used to file returns with the CTA and that didn't give us a problem. And it would finally show exactly how many trailers everyone is making." Schmitz Cargobull's UK sales an marketing director Ron Camfield unequivocal: "About bloody time! I can't come quick enough. The UK i: years behind the Continent in the wa: we report the manufacturing indus try on trailers—and not just from thi point of view of security, but als marketing and factual information. welcome it with open arms."
SMMT spokesman Robin Dickesoi confirms that the proposal is ulti. mately to have all trailers registered not just new models. "If you think o the age of the average trailer am their lifecycles it would he pointles: doing it just on new deliveries."
• Currently a trailer is only official! "recognised" at the time of its firs annual test when it is given a Ministr plate carrying details of conformity ti Type Approval and basic dimension: and weights. Its registered owner ir not listed on this plate.