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Permits doubt on train 'deal'
Page 5
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A MIDDLE EAST operator has been told that there is no guarantee that he will get Austrian road haulage permits — despite having used the expensive Ljubljana piggyback train.
But this week a Department of Transport spokesman told CM that there was no reason why the permits should not be available as planned three months after the rail journey.
Dorset operator Laurence Martin, of Martins Transport Services, said that he had been running his four vehicles to the Middle East for a year. He had used the German piggyback train in the hope of getting permits but he accused the DTp of "conning" operators with the allocation scheme.
"We used the Ljubljana train in February and I reckoned that the permits would be there for May. But when I contacted the permits office they told me there was no guarantee that we would get them at all," said Mr Martin. "They have conned us. They can't undertake to get us the permits even though we used the train as they wanted — and that was expensive," he said.
In December the DTp announced that it would allocate permits for two road-only journeys for every two outward return journeys made using the train.
The DTp announcement stated that the permits would be available three months after the rail journeys were made — but now some hauliers doubt whether they will get their road permits.