News

Felixstowe Port is to drop its charge for hauliers using its forthcoming Vehicle Booking System (VBS) - but its £21 'no-show' fine will remain. Mandatory use of the online booking arrangement will begin in November following a trial with selected hauliers. It had intended to charge £2 for every slot booked but following discussions with trade associations and hauliers it decided this wouldn't ease  congestion during peak periods.

However, the Freight Transport Association (FTA) says there will still be a significant cash cost to users as they must pay £21 every time a haulier misses a slot, with no corresponding recompense from the port if it fails to deliver on its promise on turnaround times. The FTA's head of global supply chain policy, Christopher Snelling, says: "We would accept that there has to be some mechanism for penalising people for abusing the system. If there's no penalty people would automatically make every booking they can.

"Our position is to minimise the cost to hauliers, so we are exploring other ways of penalising hauliers that abuse the system - other than purely financial. We are still looking at that." He adds: "Southampton is charging £1 per peak booking - hopefully it will be able to follow Felixstowe's lead and remove this charge." A port spokesman says: "The original  thought behind it was that the VBS process was to spread demand away from the peaks.

"But it wouldn't be particularly effective and it clearly wasn't welcomed by the users. We recognised this and we decided not to proceed with that element of it." The spokesman adds that hauliers who know they will miss a slot can put their booking back into an online 'clearing house' or exchange system in order to avoid fines. Despite repeated calls, no one from Southampton port was available to comment.