News

The government has seemingly backed away from plans to charge foreign trucks for using UK roads, claiming its favoured vignette scheme is not sufficiently cost-effective. The Freight Data Feasibility Study progress report, pub-lished by the Department for Transport (DfT) this week, says that the vignette, which would also collect data on foreign trucks, does not offer a sufficiently high value for money rating.

Indeed, it says that none of the other schemes under consideration for data  collection, which include voluntary registration and data collection, meet its cost criteria. It goes on to note that there are limited safety, congestion, environmental and other social benefits predicted from "expected improvements in enforcement".

The vignette, which the DfT originally appeared to favour, was criticised on the grounds that it would require expensive investment in technology, is a slow method of data collection and would need a huge marketing campaign. Legal implications also make a vignette risky, the study claims, as restrictions imposed by the Euro-vignette Directive state maximum charges and prescribed administration systems.

But the report notes that a vignette would offer the potential to generate a database recording the highest percentage of relevant vehicles. Despite then-Chancellor Gordon Brown's promise in 2001 for a level playing field for UK and foreign hauliers, it appears the UK is still no closer to charging foreign operators for using  its roads.

And in what operators might regard as adding further insult to injury, the report notes findings that "the fuel tax differential [between UK and foreign operators] is partially offset by lower labour taxes and other employer costs in the UK". Part two of the study is expected to be completed later this year. In a scathing attack, the Freight Transport Association slams the report as failing to produce "any meaning-ful response".