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The Freight Transport Association or FTA is a trade association aimed at those who use logistics and transport. As such its membership includes many large transport providers but also a number of large-scale transport clients, such as supermarkets and manufacturers. The FTA also differs from the Road Haulage Association, which has a traditional haulage membership base, in that it represents all freight modes including water, rail and sea. As such it could be said to take a broader political view on the needs of freight.
The FTA offers its members a wide array of services including:
Key FTA publications include a Yearbook of Road Transport Law, and Freight magazine. A full assortment of FTA publications can be found at shopfta.
FTA is also involved in policy shaping through the regional freight councils and national councils. The regional councils can advise among other things on Regional Spatial Strategies, including transport and infrastructure. The national councils are broken into modal groups. FTA engages with UK government to lobby for improvements to freight transport policy, mainly through direct contact with the Department for Transport and the Treasury. The FTA has been active in supporting the need for improvements to infrastructure, identifying the areas of key traffic growth in the next ten years and proposing key modifications to facilitate the movement of freight. These include more railway sidings, widening of certain sections of motorway and harbour/rail areas on certain waterways.
It has also been vociferous in the past in its support for the Lorry Road User Charge (LRUC), a now defunct government policy. The FTA has now transferred its support to the idea of road pricing, a form of demand management which will affect all traffic but, it hopes will offer road transport operators cost savings in terms of improved journey times and, it hopes, a rebate making the tax fiscally neutral. Currently the Freight Transport Association is renewing its calls for an essential user rebate for road haulage operators which would see a proportion of fuel duty returned to them. The October 2007 fuel duty rise of 2p/litre has, it says, put the industry under intolerable pressure and it can no longer wait a decade for road pricing to become a reality. βThe situation is urgent,β says a spokesman.
Following the collapse of the LRUC, the Freight Transport Association worked through 2006 with the Road Haulage Association to set up the Burns Freight Taxes Inquiry. Robbie Burns, formerly head of NFC, BRS and Exel respectively, was commissioned to survey the industry and report back on the effects of fuel duty and foreign competition. His report was presented to the Treasury in autumn 2005. The FTA claims that although no immediate change in government policy arose from the report, senior civil servants have now been briefed to pay greater attention to the role of road transport in underpinning the economy. The Burns Inquiry can also be seen as a precursor to the government commissioned Eddington Report into the future of UK transport.
Until June 2007 the chief executive of the FTA was Richard Turner OBE. He was succeeded by Theo de Pencier, latterly of Bibby Distribution. Supporting de Pencier as deputy chief executive is James Hookham. Other key members of staff include chief economist Simon Chapman, and external communications director Geoff Dossetter, who is often seen representing the road transport industry on mainstream media.
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