FTA seeks changes
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A GUARANTEE that outline planning permission will assure an operating centre's future will be at the top of the Freight Transport Association's shopping list for changes to the environmental controls on operator licensing.
The FTA's operations committee meets in July to review the first year of the revised 0licensing laws which require Licensing Authorities to take environmental factors into account when considering applications for new 0-licences and for changes to existing ones.
It will prepare a list of changes to the rules, and is aiming for a meeting with Transport Minister Lynda Chalker in the autumn.
FTA legal director John Mor
ris hinted last week in Leeds at the changes which would be sought.
"At one stage, long-standing lorry operators on original green field sites were at risk of closure as a result of objections by new residents in their neighbourhood.
"Even now, it is theoretically possible for a company to obtain planning permission to build an operating complex, spend a great deal of time and money in constructing it, only to find that it could not be used because the Licensing Authority agreed with the man next door who made a representation," he said.
He told CM later that it was possible to provide safeguards for an operator in such circumstances, and he envisaged that the FTA would look for this when it met Mrs Chalker.
Most other changes sought by the FTA would be fine-tuning of the rules, rather than changes of substance, but these have still to be decided in detail by the FTA operations committee.
In his Leeds speech, Mr Morris said the environmental rules represented a bad law, but it had been made tolerable by the "great tact and commonsense" of the LAs and their staff.