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Pause at the brink
Is the DoE being over-hasty in its proposals for shutting the five goods vehicle testing stations at Alvaston, Chelmsford, Keith, Salisbury and Scarborough? It has emphasized this week, in a statement to CM, that no decision on the closures has yet been taken, but all the signs are that it is well advanced in its plans to run down the bookings so that the stations could close by September this year. If they close, operators of the vehicles which at present undergo 27,000 tests a year at those five stations will be put to considerable inconvenience and expense. If, as mooted, the free re-test concession is also abandoned, it is going to be an expensive business for an operator on the "wrong" side of one of the closed stations to send his machine to an alternative station for a test and re-test.
The Department has dealt very fairly with the industry by giving the operator associations the earliest possible warnings of impending closure, and it is accepted that the testing scheme is required to be self-supporting. But there are some questions to be answered before transport men can accept the necessity of the closures. First, how is the costing of the stations undertaken? Might there not be factors which should be taken into special consideration when dealing with a scheme so important to road safety? One also wonders how thoroughly the DoE has examined the likelihood of future growth: Chelmsford, for instance, will almost certainly be fattened by the development of the third London airport at Foulness.
Operators directly affected will feel that they have been let down: the industry accepted the introduction of the testing scheme in a responsible way, on the understanding that stations would be at 25to 30-mile spacings. What went wrong with the estimates? There is also the important point that if 27,000 tests a year are transferred to alternative stations, in some cases this may load these places so close to capacity that flexibility of booking is lbst for all local operators. The closures are an economy measure which needs very careful weighing before an irrevocable decision is taken.