No tacho carte blanche for PO
Page 8
If you've noticed an error in this article please click here to report it so we can fix it.
THE POST OFFICE tachograph appeal decision (CM, February 91, does not give the Post Office carte blanche to carry goods other than mail in vehicles not equipped with tachographs.
A written judgment of the case is now available. It hinged around the interpretation of Article Four of the EEC regulations which exempt from the necessity to fit and use tachographs in vehicles used by the police, gendarmerie, armed forces, the fire brigade, civil defence, drainage or flood prevention authorities, highway authorities and refuse collection, telegraph and phone services, by the postal authorities for the carriage of mail, by radio or television services for the detection of radio or televi sion transmitters or receivers, vehicles which are used by other public authorities for public services and which are not in competition with professional road hauliers.
The PO had been convicted on two charges of using vehicles without tachographs.
The first related to an articulated vehicle travelling empty to pick up stores and the second to an engineering van returning empty after delivering a load of ladder racks.
In his detailed reasons for allowing the appeals, Judge Wilson Mellor QC said that he accepted that a vehicle should only be accorded exemption when it clearly fell within the scope of Article Four.
In his view, the exemptions in that paragraph were much more broadly described than exemptions under other paragraphs.
He believed that the final part of the paragraph relating to vehicles used by other public authorities for public services and which were not in competition with professional road hauliers had to be read in conjunction with the remainder.
He said that no-one had been able to explain to him why the additional words "for the carriage of mail" appeared, but in his view the word "mail" should be given a broad meaning and extend beyond letters and packets to those elements of the Post Office activities which were concerned with the maintenance of the mail services.
The stores which the artic was to pick up, pallets and canvas webbing and so on, were clearly incidental to those activities.
He had found more difficulty with the engineering van. However, in the case of every other public authority such a service would qualify for the exemption. He could see no logical reason why the PO should be deprived of the exemption because clearly the work was not in competition with the private sector of haulage.