Foreign hauliers to pay £9 daily road tax by 2014
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By Andy Salter and the CM team
PLANS FOR A new Lorry Road User Charge (LRUC), which will see foreign trucks charged up to £9 per day, were revealed at a CM Legal Seminar last week.
Delegates at the event, held in Harrogate during Tip-Ex 2011 (10 June), were the irst to hear the government’s plans for lorry charging from Nick Denton, head of freight policy and lorry charging at the Department for Transport (DfT).
Denton was one of the keynote speakers at the event, jointly sponsored by Trailer Resources and IMS (UK), and stressed to delegates the proposals were at an early stage, although they would likely provide the framework for the planned regulations.
Under current plans, UK operators will be charged an annual road charge (£450 a year for a three-axle, 44-tonne artic) with VED rates reduced to mitigate this charge in the vast majority of cases.
Foreign trucks will be charged daily, weekly, monthly or annually, and could contribute up to £20m to the economy through the scheme. The new rules are expected to go before ministers through formal consultation, and progress to implementation by April 2014.
A spokeswoman for the Road Haulage Association welcomed the news. “Any system that addresses the imbalance between British and foreign operators on our roads has got to be good news, although we are in no doubt that putting such a scheme into practise will not be easy.” Simon Chapman, Freight Transport Association chief economist, says: “Foreign trucks ill up with diesel bought outside the UK, where fuel duty is far lower, so not only do they avoid contributing to the UK economy at the pumps, they also put domestic companies at a commercial disadvantage. LRUC would be one way, in principle at least, to level the playing ield.”