Launch of a new Freight Enforcement Partnership in London on Tuesday aims to improve road safety by taking unsafe commercial vehicles, drivers and operators off the capital’s streets.

 

The partnership brings together Transport for London (TfL), the Driver & Vehicle Standards Agency (DVSA) and the Metropolitan and City of London police services. It involves more than 90 DVSA and police officers and a team of analysts who will share intelligence and carry out joint enforcement operations.

 

“'Working in a partnership, with shared expertise and intelligence, will help deliver even greater enforcement against rogue and unsafe freight operators who continue to not comply with the law and with the regulations,” said chair of the partnership Sir Peter Hendy.

 

The group will build on the work of the HGV Task Force, which has stopped more than 6000 non-compliant heavy goods vehicles in London since October 2013.

 

TfL managing director of surface transport Leon Daniels said: “The lessons learned from our successful HGV Task Force have been adopted by the new partnership, which will make our streets even safer for all road users and help build a fairer industry for all freight operators.”

 

The new partnership has also pledged to make better use of automatic number plate recognition technology to target and feed reports about identified operator and driver non-compliance to the Traffic Commissioner.

 

The London and South East Traffic Commissioner Nick Denton welcomed the partnership, which he said “shares two of the key objectives of the traffic commissioners - to reduce the burden on compliant operators and deal with those who pose the greatest risk to road safety”.

 

(Photo copyright Sam Saunders and licenced for reuse under this Creative Commons Licence)