VOSA promises no more station closures

The Vehicle and Operator Services Agency (VOSA) has confirmed that there are presently no more test stations allocated for closure as the initial Authorised Testing Facility (ATF) went live recently. On Monday 15th February 2010, TruckEast’s Wellingborough service officially started trading as an ATF, following the Scania dealer becoming one of the 3 firms to sign the ATF agreement the last month.

Before this, the site was operated as a Designated Premises (DP). However, since the ATF agreement was launched on 27th January, 12 additional businesses have downloaded the contract from VOSA’s Business Link website and six of these are from existing DPs.

Richard Smith, VOSA’s testing transportation programme director, says that he can guarantee that VOSA are not preparing to close any other test stations. He did say, however, that they would have to consider speaking to the Department of Transport if there were 100 ATFs around a certain VOSA station but with very few tests coming through it.In such a case, they would say to the Department for Transport (DfT) that this station is under-used and they would plan what they will do about it.

Smith was eager to quell rumours about VOSA being “in the business of just closing down stations”.