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Maurice Vandome
• Maurice Vendome, the Road Haulage Association's highways consultant, was seeing Prof Colin Buchanan on Monday. This, he explained to me last week, would be his latest step in trying to discover what is so "insurmountable" about the plan to build a lorry park at Shevingdon Moor, Lancashire. For this was the reason given by Wigan rural council for its refusal of planning permission for the development applied for by Crave! Investments and supported by the RHA. But no one has been willing to say just what the objection is.
The site lies between M6 and A49 and Mr Vandome has already flown over the area by helicopter to try to see what the fuss could be all about. "If it's not a State secret I'd like to know what is insurmountable." he told me. "Now I'm going to see if Colin Buchanan can throw any light on the matter."
This is just the sort of vigorous approach the RHA, whose Conference he will be attending for the first time next week, can expect from its new consultant. It is an attitude which will be needed in order to push lorry park plans through.
Aged 39. Mr Vandome is senior partner in a firm of surveyors and about one year ago had an idea for lorry parks, contacted the RHA and found that other minds were working along similar lines; as a result he met executive officers of the Association for the first time. He agrees that more points about the parks' establishment and design — for instance, how to arrange for vehicles to be able to leave a security compound within a reasonable time when they may number up to 300 — remain to be resolved, but expects to see tangible results within the next 12 months..
For him this may mean a trip to France before too long, as some lorry parks have been Opened there. However, I must not give the impression that parks will be his major concern over other highway matters, and it is interesting to learn that in this field he believes we do not lag behind any European country. He motors about 40,000 miles annually in Britain and is no stranger to the Continent. Of Flemish descent himself, he has — coincidentally — a Belgian wife; and an apartment in Spain. But he remains a proud Lancastrian. J.F.D.