Sweepers plan to fight VED change
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• Roadsweeper operators are planning a campaign to change the law after last year's Budget imposed big vehicle excise duty increases on their specially converted vehicles.
They believe they are the victims of a "penny pinching tax exercise" after chancellor Kenneth Clarke changed their vehicles' VED exempt status to a system based on each vehicle's gross weight as is used for multipurpose vehicles.
Manchester-based J&G Plant director Jim Yule is furious that MPs and ministers ignored his pleas for help before the law came into effect on 1 July.
Since then he has paid £650
in road tax for each of his Johnstone 600 series roadsweepers.
"A roadsweeper is not a multipurpose vehicle, it can only clean roads," he says. "A roadsweeper travels on average 6,000-10,000 miles a year compared to an LGV which travels more than 100,000."
After a meeting officials from the Department of Transport, Driver Vehicle Licensing Agency and the Treasury last Friday, Yule is calling on 30 roadsweeping companies to back him in a campaign to change ministers' minds if the Government refuses to change the law.