HGVs in West Midlands being pulled over for investigation by Highways England

With a new arrangement, the DVSA and Highways England are co-operating in an effort to work towards handling offences by truckers as well as van and bus drivers.  With the use of Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) and other databases in real time. They hope the plans will improve safety for road users and be a beneficial use of public funds.

The partnership has meant that Highways England can better carry out their stopping duties with vehicles that are marked with potential offense records. Beforehand this could only be performed by the police or DVSA recognised vehicles, but with this new partnership – vehicles will be stopped on behalf of Highways England.
The DVSA or Highways England can stop vehicles at check sites, which would be carried out by DVSA examiners who would check the driver’s hourly offences, overloaded trailers and other safety concerns.

Speaking on the matter, Director of Enforcement at the DVSA, Marian Kitson had this to say: 
“DVSA’s priority is to protect everyone from unsafe drivers and vehicles. The main winner here is road safety. Working so closely with Highways England has been a great success, it makes perfect sense for those with similar skills, resources and goals to support each other in this way.

“This partnership means we have a wider network of stopper vehicles to hunt down that minority of rogue operators who put profit before safety.”

This was announced following a trial that took place in an effort to improve safety for road users. By partnering up with Highways England, the DVSA hopes that they can use their workforce more effectively, thanks to the support offered by Highways England.

Highways England Project Manager, Gina Lawrence gave her view on the partnership: 
“We see this as enhancing the important work our traffic officers already do in dealing with incidents and helping to keep our roads moving. We have worked with DVSA to improve the efficiency of the vehicle check site which has supported our goal of improving commercial vehicle safety on the strategic road network.”
“We are pleased this will now become business as usual in the West Midlands.”

DVSA have also delegated stopping warrants to Highways England as part of this co-operation, what this means for drivers in the area – is that failing to stop for DVSA or Highways England vehicles for inspection could lead to either of the firms taking court action or alerting the Traffic Commission.

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