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Felixstowe to scrap fees for online booking system
Page 12
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The port plans to abolish hauliers' booking fees, but will keep the £21 charge for every slot missed. Chris Tindall reports.
FELIXSTOWE PORT is to drop its charge for hauliers using its forthcoming Vehicle Booking System (VBS) but its £21 'noshow' fine will remain.
Mandatory use of the online booking system will begin in November following a trial with selected hauliers. The port had intended to charge £.2 for every slot hooked hut following discussions with trade associations and hauliers it decided this wouldn't ease congestion during peak periods. However, the Freight Transport Association (ETA) says there will still be a significant cash cost to hauliers as they must pay 121 for every missed slot, with no corresponding recompense from the port if it fails to deliver on its promise on turnaround times.
The ETA's head of global supply chain policy, Christopher Snelling, says: "We accept that there has to be some mechanism for penalising people who abuse the system. If there's no penalty people would make every booking they can.
Our position is to minimise the cost to hauliers, so we're exploring other ways of penalising hauliers that abuse the systemother than purely financial."
He adds: "Southampton is charging .£1 per peak booking hopefully it will follow Felixstowe's lead and remove this charge."
A port spokesman says: "The original thought behind it was that the VBS process was to... spread demand away from the peaks. "But it wouldn't be particularly effective and it clearly wasn't welcomed by the users. We recognised this and we decided not to proceed with that element of it."
The spokesman adds that hauliers that know they will miss a slot can put their booking into an onfine'clearing house' or exchange system in order to avoid lines.
No one from Southampton port was available to comment.