DTp accepts Palm )Ian on TAOs
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• Department of Transport officials are urging Transport Secretary Cecil Parkinson to accept all the proposals outlined in the Palmer Report of Traffic Area Offices, including closing more than 50% of the existing Traffic Area Offices, forming a national licensing authority, and merging the Vehicle Inspectorate with the Licensing Authorities.
Parkinson has been advised that the National Licensing Authority proposal has met with so much opposition from the Traffic Commissioners, the clerks and the bus and coach industry (CM 30 November-6 December) that it can only succeed if primary legislation is hurried through Parliament. If this is impossible, the DTp has recommended that the traffic commissioners' suggestion of appointing a senior traffic examiner be implemented fast.
A further departmental inquiry is to decide which of the 11 Traffic Area Offices will be closed, and will recommend a new site for the Metropolitan Area Office, which is facing staff recruitment problems.
The Scottish office is unlikely to be touched, but Parkinson will have to decide if the Welsh office is too politically sensitive to be merged with the North West area Manchester office.
A DTp source says that the offices likely to survive the purge are Edinburgh, Man
chester, Birmingham, London and possibly one other, if the Wales office is closed.
Parkinson is expected to approve changes to the 0licensing system at the same time as the Palmer recommendations because it will be easier to alter both systems z the same time. But the DTp report says at although legislation to inoduce a national licence could linked with introducing the itional licensing authority, iecause the two are not inter!pendent".
An announcement is ex!cted before Christmas, but a ial decision on the number id location of the TAOs will A be made until Easter.
In their submissions to the Tp on the Palmer Report, ie Freight Transport Associaon and the Road Haulage ssociation welcomed most of Le proposals, with the FTA ?plauding the report as "the ght basis for developing a :n.icture for Traffic Commisoners and traffic areas .
Lr the needs of the 1990s". But the RHA fears that Lerging the vehicle inspectoite and traffic examiners into single body would create lore red tape, and the FTA tresses that a localised TAO ystem should be retained. The Institute of Road ransport Engineers has told Le Department of Transport
that its proposed changes to the UK operator licensing system (CM 10-16 August) would lower standards. Rental and leasing companies would still escape the operator licensing net, warns the IRTE.
Continuous licensing would cause problems for large operators trying to match fleet size to varying demands, it continues, and removal of minibuses with less than nine seats from fleet limits would encourage their use, despite a "minefield of maintenance problems".