Free offer on RTITB shares to hauliers
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• Free shares in the Road Transport Industry Training Board's successor, RTITB Services, are to be offered to all hauliers who currently pay the levy.
It had been planned to sell shares to former levy payers at a nominal price, but this has been ruled out after talks between RTITB chiefs and Charity Commissioners.
Companies who paid the levy in the last year it was statutory. April 1990 to April 1991, will now be invited to take up shares in RTITB services at no cost; no operator will be allowed to hold more than 1% of the total shares.
But the overall plan for the RTITB's privatisation, which has yet to win Parliamentary approval, could be thrown into chaos if the Tories are defeated in today's election. The Department of Transport intends to wind up the board by September.
Labour has promised to reintroduce statutory training levies for all industries—Conservative policy has been to phase out compulsory payments and leave responsibility for funding training to individual companies.
Under the statutory levy scheme about 14,000 hauliers, motor factors, car leasing firms and bodybuilders paid a proportion of their payroll to the RTITB, claiming much of it back in training grants.