' TC raps lax operator
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• Operators have been told to move with the times and invest in their infrastructure as they would their vehicles.
Scottish Traffic Commissioner Michael Betts said standards that might have been acceptable years ago might no longer be so, and just because a situation had always been so was no justification for doing nothing to improve it.
He made the comments as he granted Alastair Shand and Ian Thomas, trading as Wm Brown GTS, authority to base 11 vehicles and 10 trailers at Durie Vale, Windygates, Fife. But Betts imposed a series of environmental conditions on the licence.
Although the company had not fulfilled assurances given to Fife Council after a monitoring exercise, Betts said that two of the residents that opposed Wm Brown's application had bought properties in the area in full knowledge of the yard's existence. For the firm, Michael Whiteford told Betts that Wm Brown operated 14 vehicles and 12 trailers from two other sites in Fife, but maintenance was already being carried out at Windygates.
Residents complained of noise, dust and a breach of time conditions. Additionally, parked vehicles blocked the views from the backs of their houses, and the vehicle movements increased the effects of vibration. They maintained that conditions had become significantly worse since the firm arrived.
Thomas acknowledged that he did not perhaps take firm enough control over their drivers and that there was no supervision of the time they chose to start work.
Betts said two of the residents had bought their properties recently knowing that they were sited downwind of a busy operating centre. A third had owned his property since 1988, but even then some haulage work was based at the yard.
Although the commissioner had sympathy for the residents, the "buyer beware" principle was long established. But it could not excuse the firm's failure to take environmental protection.
He was unimpressed by the way that the firm had failed to respond to the council's visit in April and accused the operator of showing no consideration for the residents.