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Enforcement too costly
Page 9
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• Northumberland is the latest county council to stop weighing lorries because of a cash squeeze.
Trading standards officers, who had spent up to 50 days a year weighing vehicles and pursuing overloading prosecutions. had found that around 10% of the 400 trucks they weighed each year were overweight. The abandonment of vehicle weighing is blamed on continued central government spending restrictions. It follows similar cuts in Kent and Oxfordshire.
County councils have no statutory duty to weigh v cles—Northumberlancl has given up weighing after be' ng forced to cut /80,000 from its /900,000 annual budget.
County trading standards officer John Richards says: 'If there is going to be a lower g of enforcement activity—C d there seems to be no signal t at the Vehicle Inspectorate ill increase its activity to comp nsate—there will be a grea er opportunity for those who re inclined to flout road safety 1 gislation and to damage ur roads."