Permit purge
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ITALIAN Customs officers are already applying stricter controls to the flow of British vehicles through their frontiers.
The Road Haulage Association's international members report the increased checks, with vehicles being turned back if they have invalid permits. Valid permits are being stamped systematically to ensure that they cannot be used again.
RHA officers are warning their members to have correct documentation, and are urging customers only to use hauliers who possess an allocation of legitimate permits.
This move comes against the background of RHA indignation at British Customs officers' inability to apply similar controls on Continental hauliers entering Britain without permits.
It blames this in part on British hauliers' fall in the share of international traffic with Britain from 58 per cent in 1980 to 45 per cent last year. THREE men were jailed at Ipswich Crown Court last week for their roles in the theft and concealment of two million teabags from a Felixstowe haulage yard.
A container holding more than 3,100 boxes of teabags was stolen from the Repcon yard in Felixstowe last September, the court heard.
The bulk of the haul was later found by police in a barn belonging to two of the defendants, Moss Lazarus and Louis Hartgen, both of Brentwood.
Both denied dishonestly assisting in the retention of the stolen goods, but both were found guilty. Mr Lazarus was jailed for four years, and Mr Hartgen for nine months.
Leslie Humphrey of Bowers Gifford, Basildon, admitted stealing the container holding the teabags and was jailed for three years.