NATIONAL WINS APPROVAL
Page 30
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NEW LEYLAND National Buses produced at Workington are not now being individually examined by the Department of the Environment inspectors before Certificates of Fitness are issued for them.
But type approval as envisaged by the EEC has not arrived in this country. This scheme is allowed by the 1930 Road Traffic Act and is more commonly known as "certificate approval."
Before the scheme got under way earlier this year a DoE Certifying Officer was more or less permanently stationed at Workington to pass out completed vehicles. Now the DoE is satisfied that National production has settled down sufficiently for only a sample of buses to be examined. The others are taken to have been built to the same standards.
There seems to have been only one previous instance of the "type approval" powers being used. This was in the 1930s when the Leyland Lion was built completely at Leyland to a uniform design.
Plans to introduce EEC type approval do not exist at present although plans for cars were laid before Parliament last week and could be extended to buses and commercial vehicles.