Alarm at vehicle base restrictions
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THE DRAFT Regulations on the environmental conditions to be attached to operators' licences must be rewritten to remove the risk of "back door" planning controls, the Freight Transport Association has told the Department of Transport.
In a preliminary summary of detailed objections which were being finalised as we closed for press this week, FTA controller of operations David Green has called on the DTp to act before operators' worst fears are realised and substantial planning controls are placed on industrial premises used as vehicle operating bases.
Mr Green told CM that discussions with around 1,0 0 0 operators represented on local and national FTA committees have revealed "very great alarm" about the changes, which stem from the 1982 Transport Act, and which will give Licensing Authorities power to attach strict conditions to any vehicle base on an 0-licence.
The FTA accepted that the regulations will be introduced, he said, but it believes they go further than is necessary and will cause severe problems not only for operators, but also for LAs who will be required to take subjective decisions on purely planning matters.
The FTA wants the Regulations to be redrawn so that only essential matters affecting the operation of vehicles can be affected by the Act. "We know that the prime target of this legislation is to ensure that operating centres have proper provision for the parking of vehicles based at that location. Any activity which, therefore, does not have to be undertaken at the place where the vehicles are kept is, in our view, irrelevant," Mr Green has told the DTp.
But the main concern of the FTA and its members surrounds the plans to take account of the nature of businesses to be carried out at operating centres.
According to Mr Green, this will lead LAs away from the true purpose of the 1982 Act, and will cause particular problems for own-account operators for whom transport is a subsidiary activity and whose industrial activity ought to be covered by existing planning procedures. Similar industrial companies which do not hold 0-licences would not be affected, the FTA believes.