INSIDER VIEW
Page 22
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Parking vehicles away from operating centres is a growing problem. But should LAs deal with it, or the police and highway authorities?
• There is growing evidence of a determined crackdown by Licensing Authorities against unauthorised parking of vehicles and trailers away from their operating centres.
And two recent cases have some disturbing implications. In the first, 15 operators were called before North Eastern Deputy Licensing Authority Brian Homer, for alleged breaches of 569A of the 1968 Transport Act.
At the outset, Homer said that there was considerable concern about the amount of illegal parking at places other than the authorised operating centre and there had been a lot of complaints from the public on both environmental and safety grounds. Conditions were made on licences and those conditions were being flouted. He hoped that the present proceedings would be taken as a general warning by the industry. If the practice did not stop, operators would face prosecution, disciplinary action against the licences, or both.
When Homer was asked for guidance on when a vehicle did not have to be parked at its operating centre, and the frequency it had to be parked in a particular place for that place to be regarded as its operating centre, he said that if a vehicle was away from base he would not regard that as contravening the Act. However, if it was borne based he would expect it to be parked at its designated operating centre at all times.
A number of the firms admitted they had allowed drivers to take vehicles home when start ing early the next day. Others had thought it was all right to allow them to take just the tractor units home, or had simply not known that drivers were taking vehicles home.
Owner-driver Gordon Havercroft, whose operating centre is in Harrogate, disputed that stopping overnight in Leeds was unauthorised parking. He said he transported containers from Ipswich, Hull and Manchester, parking in a different town each night. When he stopped in Leeds it had been during the course of journeys.
Homer said it was unauthorised as Havercroft was back in the "general area" of his operating centre. There was a distinct difference if he was away overnight outside the Traffic Area.
Though he took no action against any of the licences, other than to issue a severe warning, Homer made it clear that stronger action would most certainly follow if the warning was not heeded.
Authority
Section 69A(1) of the 1968 Act states: "A person may not use a place in the area of any Licensing Authority as an operating centre for authorised vehicles under any Operator's Licence granted to him by that authority unless it is specified in that licence."
Section 52 of the Act says:
id
• operating centre, in relation to any vehicle, means the base of centre at which the vehicle is normally kept, and references to an operating centre of the holder of an operator's licence are references to any place which is an operating centre for authorised vehicles under the licence".
Nowhere in those provisions is there any mention of parking. Consequently, when the DLA said the operators concerned were in breach of Section 69A, he was presumably suggesting that they were using an unauthorised operating centre. In the past, the Transport Tribunal has held that occasional parking in a particular place on a regular basis does not necessarily make that place an "operating centre". It all depends upon where the vehicle is "normally kept".
That point is best illustrated by a recent case where two Bedfordshire operators appeared before Eastern Depu ty Licensing Authority Ian Fowler, following complaints that they had been parking vehicles without authority in the commercial vehicle park at Sandy, Beds.
One haulier, B H King Transport of Oakley, Bedford, admitted that a vehicle had been parked on the commercial. vehicle park over a considerable period of time. The driver lived in Sandy and did not have his own transport.
Reference was made to the Dip leaflet A Guide To Goods Vehicle Operators Licensing, which states on page 8: "An operating centre is the place where your vehicles are normally kept. Places where vehicles are parked occasionally, even on a regular basis, in circumstances which are exceptional to the normal conduct of an operator's business, are not operating centres."
Fowler said that he felt that the vehicle had been parked at Sandy so regularly that the vehicle park was becoming that vehicle's operating centre. He did not accept the driver's lack of transport as an "exceptional circumstance".
He was prepared to renew the licence only in respect of 24 vehicles and trailers — a reduction of one vehicle and trailer — to mark his disapproval of the use of the car park and of a number of convictions recorded against the company.
The other haulier, Richard Lakin, trading as Sandy Mini Skip Hire, admitted that he had used the vehicle park as his operating centre after problems arose at his authorised operating centre.
Fowler said that this was a more serious case. Lakin had got into a situation where he had been operating without a legal operating centre and he would have been justified in revoking the licence. Instead the DLA cut the duration, so that the licence expired in a month's time, giving Lakin time to apply for a proper operating centre.
Question
In both these cases the vehicles had been using the park regularly, but the question has to be asked: "What is wrong with parking in a designated commercial vehicle park?"
If Licensing Authorities are going to insist that vehicles are kept at their operating centres when ever they are within their traffic area, it will put a heavy burden on operators' shoulders, and one that does not appear to be envisaged in the wording of the legislation. Indeed many licences carry environmental conditions that ban the total authorised number of vehicles and trailers from being parked at the operating centre at any one time. Such a move might also encourage drivers, particularly owner-drivers, to break the drivers' hours rules in an effort to get their vehicles back to their centre.
Parking problems should be left to the police and the highway authorities, who are the competent authorities to take the necessary action 4,7ainst inconsiderate parking.
lilby "Insider".