§ Mr. StevensonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if the Vehicle Inspectorate routinely tests non-original equipment parts used in the motor vehicle body repair industry. [157122]
§ Mr. HillNo. Testing and approval of components and vehicles prior to sale or registration is carried out by the Vehicle Certification Agency in the UK. However, there is no statutory approval standard for non original replacement body panels and so they are not tested or approved.
§ Mr. StevensonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions if he will take steps to require vehicles that have been repaired following a serious accident to be subjected to independent tests.[157126]
§ Mr. HillUnder new provisions which have recently been approved by Parliament, such vehicles will, in future, need to be inspected by officials from the Department's Vehicle Inspectorate before they can legally be returned to the road.
The objective of inspecting such vehicles will be to ensure that they are genuine, rather than having been stolen and disguised with the identity of similar 373W accident-damaged ones. At present in the region of 40,000 stolen cars annually are sold on in this way to unsuspecting purchasers. The new inspection scheme will help to eliminate this criminal activity.
The new inspection scheme is not intended to check on the adequacy of the accident repair—and this point will be made very clear to vehicle presenters. That would have made the scheme very costly and unnecessarily cumbersome. However, we are naturally very concerned to do all we can to see that only safe vehicles are used on the road and we will therefore be encouraging motorists to have vehicles independently checked by experts if there is any doubt at all about the quality of repair.
§ Mr. StevensonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what regulations govern the disposal of vehicles that have been written off after accidents. [157123]
§ Mr. HillThere are no regulations which deal specifically with this subject.
In practice when a vehicle is written off after an accident it might either end up being crushed or broken for spare parts. Alternatively, where the damage is not so severe, it might be repaired and returned to the road.
In all cases where a vehicle is crushed or broken the owner is required by Regulation 13 of the Road Vehicles (Registration and Licensing) Regulations 1971 to notify the Secretary of State of that fact and at the same time to surrender the registration document to him. This requirement is to be strengthened by a European Directive concerned with the disposal of motor vehicles when they have reached the "end of life".
In future, in all cases where a written-off vehicle is repaired and returned to the road it will firstly need to be inspected by officials from the Department's Vehicle Inspectorate. The objective of inspecting such vehicles will be to ensure that they are genuine, rather than stolen vehicles disguised with the identity of similar accident-damaged ones.
374W
£million Nature of funding 1997–98 1998–99 1999–2000 2000–01 2001–02 Revenue Support Grant1 100.6 108.6 113.9 111.7 117.6 Income from National Non-Domestic Rates1 50.3 52.1 56.1 62.9 61.1 Housing Investment Programme 5.8 5.5 6.2 16.5 22.1 Capital Receipts Initiative — 4.0 4.1 — — Neighbourhood Renewal Fund — — — — 2.7 Challenge Fund2 3.9 4.9 1.7 0.2 — New Deal for Communities Funding3 — — — 0.2 0.1 ERDF Funding4 — — — — — Transport Supplementary Grant 2.9 0.8 0.3 — — Transport Annual Capital Guideline5 2.9 0.8 0.2 1.6 — Transport Block Supplementary Credit Approval3 1.1 1.0 1.0 3.8 — Rural Bus Subsidy Grant6 — 0.02 — — 0.2 1These figures have not been adjusted to make year on year comparisons possible 2The Salford Partnership—Round 2. A five year strategy within City Pride context comlining city-wide programmes on economic development, removing barriers to employment, community safety and crime reduction with concentration on physical development in areas of need. Challenge Fund total—£16.7 million. Scheme total £60.5 million 3 2000–01 includes both Phase 1 and 2. 2001–02 is Phase 2 carried over into this financial year. 4Two wards of the Eccles constituency are part of the Inner Salford Action Plan area which has been awarded £1.3 million ERDF grant, of which £453,448 has been claimed since July 1998. The claims do not follow the financial year so cannot be broken down The rest of the Eccles constituency will be included in the City Pride area which includes all he eligible areas of Manchester, Salford and Trafford; it is therefore not possible to determine how much ERDF will have been of benefit to Eccles. The amount of ERDF/ESF awarded to City Pride is approximately £36 million 5 The figures for 1999–2000 and 2000–01 include the Metrolink Eccles extension which was completed last year. Transport figures for 2001–02 are not yet available 6These figures are for Greater Manchester
§ Mr. StevensonTo ask the Secretary of State for the Environment, Transport and the Regions what annual usage of volatile organic compounds require motor vehicle body repair shops to register with their local authority. [157138]
§ Mr. HillThe Environmental Protection (Prescribed Processes and Substances) Regulations 1991, as amended, made under Part I of the Environmental Protection Act 1990 set thresholds for annual usage of organic solvents in coating processes. The regulations include a requirement that the following processes be authorised by the relevant local authority
Any process for the repainting or respraying of or of parts of road vehicles if the process may result in the release into the air of particulate matter or of any volatile organic compound and the carrying on of the process by the person concerned at the location in question is likely to involve the use of 1 tonne or more of organic solvents in any 12 month period.Additionally, under the Solvent Emissions Directive (1999/13/EC) motor vehicle body repair shops that use between 0.5 and 1 tonne per annum of organic solvents will also be requited to be regulated to control volatile organic compound emissions. However, for existing processes, the provisions of the Directive will not fully apply until October. 2007.