Tax and tanker on and off site
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We are civil engineering contractors engaged on constructing a new bypass and we use an old 10,000-litre tanker on a four-wheel drive chassis for topping-up fuel tanks at two fuel stores on the site.
The nearest tank to the site base, where the fuel is received from a road tanker, is about 800 metres and the other is about 2,000 metres from the first. The vehicle can be driven on-site to the first store but has to go on a public road to get from there to the second store.
The vehicle has been taxed as a works truck, but does the driver need an LGV licence to drive it when on the road?
On the information given it is doubtful that the vehicle is a works truck or that it is correctly licensed, but an exemption from LGV licensing could still be available to the driver.
Works trucks are exempt from LGV driver licensing by Regulation 27 of the Motor Vehicles (Driving Licenses) (Large Goods and Passenger-Carrying Vehicles) Regulations 1990, and the exemption is not related to how the vehicle is licensed.
For LGV licence purposes a works truck is given the same meaning as in the Road Vehicles (Construction and Use) Regulations 1986. There it is defined as "a motor vehicle (other than straddle carrier) designed for use in private premises and use on a road only in delivering goods from or to such premises to or from a vehicle on a road in the immediate neighbourhood or in passing from one part of any such premises in the immediate neighbourhood or in connection with road works while at or in the immediate neighbourhood of the site of such works".
Not only does it appear that the vehicle in question is not designed for use in private premises, but the two fuel stores are not in the "immediate neighbourhood" of each other.
There is a High Court ruling that premises separated by a road distance of six-tenths of a mile (965m) are not in the "immediate neighbourhood" of each other.