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check your clients
Page 8
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• by Jaz Abbott Rental and leasing firms are split over the latest warning from a Traffic Commissioner that they must check the legality of anyone hiring vehicles—or face losing their trucks.
South Eastern and Metropolitan area TC Christopher Heaps said he was placing the onus on owners or lessors to ensure vehicles are hired only to operators with current 0-licences.
In the future, says Heaps, owners should make continuous checks to make sure that vehi
cies are being operated by licensed operators even to the extent of obtaining details of the revocations and suspensions that are published in Applications and Decisions.
But plans to give leasing firms access to operators' records via the TAN21computer system have been played down by the Vehicle Inspectorate.
Lord Attlee. who led the call for impounding in 1999, says: "This will help eliminate cowboys, raise standards and wipe out those at the bottom end who cut corners and work at uneconomic rates. The message is simple: you shouldn't be hiring a vehicle to someone without an Operator's Licence."
But Jay Parmar, legal services manager at the British Vehicle Rental and Leasing Association, says: "We are very nervous that this will be unfair to our members when the onus should lie with end users.'
Leasing firms' contracts should "reflect an element of liability" for users to ensure they use vehicles legally, because members have little control once the vehicle is leased, he adds.
Heaps called for "due diligence" despite ordering the return of an impounded vehicle to its owner—a leasing company—at a recent appeal.
In January Fintan Doyle of City Waste of Stratford was stopped driving an eight-wheeler which had an out-of-date interim licence among other faults.
But last week Heaps accepted that Finance and Leasing of London was unaware of these offences. "In this case i am prepared to accept that it Finance and Leasing] did not know that the vehicle was being used illegally" he concluded.
• A vehicle laden with bird cages was impounded by the VI at Breadsall in Derbyshire on 27 February for tachograph offences. On 1 March two vehicles run by Worcester-based Blackpole Recycling were also impounded. Both companies have 21days to appeal.
• See Comment, pages.