Dear Residents,
From the Sunday Times today.
Foreign truckers hog UK laybys to dodge French rest fines
Mark Hookham and Hazel Shearing
March 12 2017, 12:01am, The Sunday Times
Foreign lorry drivers are spending "long weekends" parked in laybys on British roads to get around strict French and Belgian rules on rest periods.
A foreign lorry driver urinating in a layby near to a channel port.
Increasing numbers of drivers, mainly from eastern Europe, are "camping" for two consecutive nights in their lorries, clogging up laybys and rest areas near the Channel ports in southern England.
Under EU rules, lorry drivers must take a weekly break that averages 45 hours. Both France and Belgium have banned drivers from taking this in their cabs amid fears that poorly paid eastern European truckers are living in their lorries for months at a time, taking jobs from local drivers and causing parking problems.
In Belgium, truckers caught taking their long break in their vehicle can be hit with a £1,500 on-the-spot fine, while in France the haulage company they work for can be fined £26,000.
The UK, however, has no ban on drivers taking their 45-hour break in their lorry, which the Road Haulage Association (RHA) says encourages foreign drivers to spend this long rest period in UK laybys.
"What is happening is that particularly eastern European drivers are effectively camping across western Europe, including in the UK, and taking their long rest break in the cab," said Jack Semple, policy director at the RHA. He suggested that drivers taking long breaks in their cabs should be fined £300.
Last weekend, The Sunday Times identified a Polish-registered lorry pulling a P&O Ferrymasters trailer, which was parked on Friday afternoon in a layby on the A2 near Denton, 10 miles from Dover. It remained in the layby until Sunday morning and at one point the driver was seen urinating by the side of the vehicle.
The lorry, which was delivering goods from Tilbury in Essex to Duffel in Belgium, left the layby around 45 hours after it was first pictured and drove to the Dover ferry terminal.
P&O said the lorry was owned by a subcontractor and that it encouraged its haulage firms to "park in recognised truck stops or depots", adding: "We will be taking up this matter with the haulier."
Katarzyna Szydlowska, co-owner of the lorry firm and the driver's wife, denied he was trying to avoid being fined in France or Belgium. "The driver decided to make his weekend break in UK," she said. "He is not always able to find a proper parking area with a toilet."
Annika Hawthorne runs a cafe in a layby on the A2 and says that each week at least four foreign lorries park for two days. The drivers sometimes used stoves to cook in the back of their lorries and treated the hedge as a lavatory, she said.
Paul Carter, the leader of Kent county council, is calling for the government to build a series of lorry parks, saying the amount of parking is getting worse.
"We've tried to put bollards up in certain lanes where all sorts of stuff goes on — you get prostitutes operating out of white vans and all sorts of things going on," he said.
The Department for Transport said it was "consulting" on the issue adding: "We are keeping our approach under review."
