• Latches on diesel pumps, which allow drivers to leave
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their vehicles and rest while their tanks fill up, have been banned as a fire and environmental hazard by Surrey and Essex County Councils. But dozens of truck drivers have told cashiers at Clackett Lone services on the Surrey stretch of the M25 that they would stop using the station after the latches were recently removed from diesel pumps on the order of Surrey County Council. Colin Dowling, a driver for Star Lane Commercials in Great Wakering, Essex, says that taking away the latches is "a daft idea. Holding the pump for a quarter of an hour to fill up the truck could really make your hand ache, and it is a complete waste of a driver's time."
Drivers heading between Sussex and Essex could stop in Kent, where John Simmonds, head of the county council's trading standards department, says modern stations' interceptor gutters channel any spilt petrol or diesel safely into underground storage tanks.
Dowling says drivers are using large paper clips to act as the clips did on the pump.