• Dip presses for tacho on bin lorries
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LOCAL AUTHORITY skip lorries are the latest target for the Department of Transport in its efforts to clear up the confusion over tachograph exemption, reports ALAN MILLAR.
The DTp is appealing against a magistrates' decision last month that Newcastle upon Tyne City Council does not need tachographs in a fleet of skip lorries used for trade refuse collection from supermarkets and factories, and is prepared to take the matter to the European Court of Justice.
The magistrates ruled last month that the council had not contravened the tachograph regulations, which exempt vehicles used for refuse collection, or vehicles which are "not in competition with professional road hauliers", and ordered the DTp to pay £750 costs to the council.
But the DTp is still concerned that the exemption is not clear, as it believes that the skip lorries are in competition with private hauliers' vehicles, and wants the matter clarified by an appeal court.
It has been under pressure from the National Association of Waste Disposal Contractors, which is concerned about competition from local authorities who do not need to comply with such costs as tachographs represent, but who are openly competing with private contractors.
According to NAWDC, Newcastle's trade collection service is between 50 and 75 per cent cheaper than its members' services. A Road Haulage Association spokesman added that it, too, is concerned about the inequitable position between the private and public sectors, and wants the same set of rules to apply to both. In essence, it supports the DTp's case.
Part of the doubt surrounds the true meaning of the "not in competition" clause in the exemptions.
This was added at a later stage to the section exempting various public authority vehicles, including those used for refuse collec tion, and has been presumed to apply to public authorities other than those specified already in the exemptions.
But there are fears in the own account sector that if it means that the vehicles of specified public authorities, like the Post Office and refuse collection services, must not be in competition with professional road hauliers, then far fewer vehicles will be exempt in future.
The European Court has already been set the task of establishing whether British bread delivery operators need fit tachographs to their vehicles (CM,July 2).