Police forces are taking a more aggressive approach to enforcement of regulations on moving abnormal loads, it is claimed. While advance notice and enforcement is necessary for traffic management and road safety, according to a report by Cebr, an economics and business research consultancy, ‘heavy restrictions on movements, stringent early notification requirements and blanket embargoes are causing significant practical difficulties and unsustainable financial strain on operators’.
Since autumn 2022, the road haulage sector has observed that some police forces – major ones in terms of motorways and freight routes such as West Midlands, Cheshire, Humberside and the Met – have imposed a de-facto enhanced regulatory regime, according to the report on the ‘costs of increased police enforcement of abnormal loads regulations‘. This has entailed increased enforcement embargoed time, which restricts the movements of vehicles that move abnormal loads, the report says. “This has led to a large increase in operating costs that the road haulage industry faces as well as effects to both the public sector and other industries that are serviced by the road haulage sector. Firms have reported that certain police forces have become much less flexible regarding the changing of dates for approvals and much less willing to accept short notice movements. This represents a significant deviation from legislative guidance, with this occurring in the absence of industry consultation,” it adds.
The Road Haulage Association (RHA) found variation between police forces: while police on Merseyside and North Wales will reject any movement order over three days, ‘Greater Manchester is more reasonable but still rejects anything over ten days’, while other areas will tend to accept 30 days on a movement order. The report urges a nationwide ‘consistent and harmonised approach’, ‘supported by a universal early notification and route
planning system’. The report asks forces ‘that that have recently unilaterally increased their level of enforcement of the regulations should revert to their previous level of enforcement and properly engage with industry’.
Hauliers spoke to the researchers of some forces as ‘unresponsive and unhelpful’.
Background
The RHA reports that while hauliers must notify police when they’re moving abnormal loads when specific dimensions and/or weight thresholds are reached, West Midlands Police had insisted that hauliers must hire officers to escort. The RHA adds that police have confirmed that operators are not mandated to hire police to escort abnormal loadsbut are free to ‘self-escort’, unless hauliers feel they need to pay for officers to assist.
