ROUND AND ROUND
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• First the good news. The High Court has ruled that the London Lorry Ban Condition 11, which requires air brake silencers on all trucks applying for exemption permits, is unlawful. Now the bad news. After months of legal pingpong, the London Boroughs Transport Committee (the non-elected body which operates the lorry ban) has decided to appeal against the court's decision.
The LBTC, to put it mildly, has a lot of nerve. Last week no less a legal luminary than Lord Justice Watkins told the LBTC that it "is not entitled to lay down standards of silencing involving a technical matter of construction by insisting on a condition of silencers. If it is a matter to be regulated," he said, "then it must be a matter of general application by the Secretary of State by amending existing regulations." The only grounds for the appeal given so far is a viigue plea that the judgment is a "retrograde step for the people of London". Says who? Has the LBTC bothered to ask Londoners what they think? Has it asked them how they feel about it engaging in a long, expensive legal battle with the road haulage industry?
It really is hard to see why the LBTC has decided to appeal. Does it feel so strongly about the High Court's decision that it is fighting it as a matter of principle? Or does it have a legal ace up its sleeve which could throw the matter back into dispute? If the LBTC wants to improve the lot of Londoners, why not simply accept that it was a battle it didn't win and carry on with the process of issuing permits to those operators that need them, and crack down on those hauliers that are caught without them? Commercial Motor has a lot of sympathy with considered environmental regulations which reduce the impact of HGVs on the commmunity. But there are sensible, justifiable regulations and then there are frivolous, time-wasting regulations.
In the past we have criticised the industry's two major trade associations for not fighting hard enough for hauliers, so this time we are happy to compliment them for fighting hard, and well. But what a pity that they had to fight at all. As FTA director-general Garry Turvey put it: "Our only regret is that we had to go to the High Court on a matter which the Department of Transport could have solved years ago." We couldn't put it better.