Hauliers have criticised the DfT over the way it allocated European Conference of Ministers of Transport (ECMT) permits after motortansport.co.uk discovered that it issued less than half of the UK’s share.

The permits are the only device that will allow international hauliers to operate on the continent if the UK leaves the EU without a deal.

Ahead of the original Brexit leaving date of 31 March, the DfT urged more than 10,000 firms to apply for them. However, MT can reveal that just 697 of the 1,610 permits were allocated by the end of the process.

The bid was oversubscribed, with 11,392 applications made by 1,991 companies. This left hundreds of hauliers without any permits or with significantly fewer than they had applied for. They were notified by email in February.

Louise Debbage, director of Mac European Freight, which transports headstones to Europe for the Commonwealth War Graves Commission, said of her refusal email: “We were informed, without any reasons, on 10 February. That was appalling; there was a lot of anger about that. It gave no reasons.

"It’s not clear how the next application process will work, but given that you have to account for recent journeys, I suspect we’ll have to do it all over again.”

Brexit stamp

Debbage said it remained unclear whether a licence application in Q3 will give the company a 12-month permit or one until the end of 2019. “None of that was clear before and even less so now,” she said.

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Brian Yeardley Continental applied for 70 permits. Operations director Bruce Newton said: “We were granted 14. It’s nothing like sufficient. The whole thing was a shambles. We’ve had many conversations with the DfT and it doesn’t seem to understand the process or what’s going on.”

Sarah Laouadi, European policy manager at the FTA, said the DfT had tried to optimise a hopelessly inadequate system. “ECMT was never meant as the solution for Brexit,” she said.

ECMT permits were designed as an ancillary system to work alongside European Community licences and many bilateral agreements, but they are now the only mechanism available to authorise freight movements outside a comprehensive transition deal and the EU is reluctant to make concessions.

“EU contingency plans for free movement end on 31 December 2019, so we will face this again,” Laouadi added.

The permits allocation process has been administered by the DVSA an executive agency of the DfT.

Image: Shutterstock

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