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NORTHERN IRELAND is planning to introduce the same operator licensing system for commercial vehicles as the rest of the UK.
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Until now the Northern Irish system has been different because only hire-and-reward operators have required 0-licences. Ownaccount operators, who only run vehicles for their own businesses, have been exempt.
There are currently 30,000 vehicles over 3.5 tonnes in Northern Ireland, of which more than half (16,000) do not currently require 0-licences. There are 2,500 0-licences, with an average fleet size of seven vehicles.
The Freight Transport Association has welcomed the change, which has been made by the Northern Ireland Department of the Environment.
FTA regional policy manager Tom Wilson says: "It makes good sense that we have similar systems because if we don't we have a lot of people running commercial vehicles which are not up to the standard they should be."
Under the new plans, which will take two years to come into effect, the only remaining difference between Northern Ireland and the rest of the UK's 0-licence systems will be that the there will be no Traffic Commissioner.
The system is likely to be administered, as it is now, by the agency Driver and Vehicle Licensing Northern Ireland.
Wilson adds that one of the challenges for those operators who do not require 0-licences at present is that many of them do not yet possess the Certificate of Professional Competence (CPC).
-There is a bit of ignorance about that here," he adds. "A lot of them are going to have to take themselves off to go and get a CPC.