Top TC slams DOT for failing to outlaw partial flagging
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by Melanie Hammond Senior Traffic Commissioner Michael Betts has hit out at the Department of Transport for its continuing failure to outlaw partial flagging out, and he is demanding urgent clarification on this issue.
"It is unfair to legitimate operators to allow this uncertainty to continue and if it does, there is a serious risk that impounding legislation will be devalued," he says.
The warning appears in the Traffic Commissioners' annual report for 1999/2000.
In 1999 the Department of Transport advised hauliers that foreign-registered vehicles could be placed on British Operator's Licences but that, in some cases, their use "might constitute an Excise offence". To date only two operators have been prosecuted: Scottishbased A&H Kydd and Felixstowe-based Dailyfre.sh Logistics UK.
Kydd was ordered to pay £261.50 backduty on a vehicle it had registered in Ireland. However, this case failed to fully test the issue in court as the company changed its plea to guilty. Dailyfresh was given a 12month conditional discharge and ordered to pay £450 prosecution costs.
Betts comments: "Traffic Commissioners have been disappointed by the reluctance of the department or its agencies to prosecute or, if that is now considered not to be the way ahead, to change the law."
He recently upheld a decision to cut the licence of Ayrshire-based Reids Transport from 35 vehicles to four and from 45 trailers to six (CM 23-29 Nov). This case will now go before the Transport Tribunal; It will be watched carefully by the hundreds of operators who have partially flagged out.
Betts adds: "It seems illogical to the Commissioners that, while the European Commission advised in 1996 that an individual had to register his motor car in the member state in which he has his normal residence, and that he could not register it in another country of his choice where the tax might be lower, this sensible ruling does not appear to be applied to commercial vehicles."
The Ms are also concerned about the "apparent ease" with which some hauliers "with an unsatisfactory record" have acquired foreign 0-licences.