November/December Issue 59 - Flipbook - Page 17
NEWS
THE OBSERVATIONALIST
within the Police system has decided we need a
new standard for SOCO bays to better protect the
evidence gathering, who will pay for that I wonder and
what happened to all the Police owned examination
bays attached to main Police stations and I believe
the Police and Crime Commissioners regarded them
The Work Providers all survive financially in a as an asset so they sold most of them for financial
competitive market because they control the sale gain.
of their product and its services that they provide
at the expense of the recovery operator, so how on
earth do they expect recovery operators to survive
financially when the Stated biggest provider of
roadside assistance to the motoring public, the AA are
so far in the red that it is up for sale and I imagine a
good proportion of their creditors are us, the recovery
industry. All of the Work providers are selling our
services far too cheap.
Supermarket chains all survive financially in
a competitive market because they control
the purchase and sale price of a product at the
expense of others, for that read the farmers and
others, not dissimilar to recovery operators.
Whilst having to use a particular stretch of Motorway
roadworks about 4 times recently that is being
converted into a smart motorway with a 50mph limit I
could not help but marvel at the lack of concentration
displayed by drivers with signage for a nearside lane
closure coming up and having to filter into lane two
guided by cones, 90% of the drivers did not recognise
the lane closure that was looming until the last minute
with no indication and plenty of panic braking. Now
there is one hell of an argument against smart
Police forces throughout the country no doubt spurred motorways, but you cannot legislate for plain dumb
on by these so-called Police and Crime Commissioners drivers who lack almost no visual awareness.
to generate income for the Police force are more
and more dipping into the supposedly golden pot of
Statutory fees which have not been reviewed since
2008 which on the bread and butter work of £150 the
Police are collecting a proportion of it for themselves
then another sum to the managing agent and low and
behold if the vehicle is not collected they draw monies
from the salvage or Auction.
We the industry provide SOCO bays free of charge
to the Police force whilst we still pay rent and rates New Electric vehicles are almost being unveiled
on the building and we discover some bright spark weekly and supposed industry professionals have
come up with a scheme for Mechanics, Technicians
and Recovery operators to be trained in at least 1 or
2 or 3 new disciplines dependent on the type of repair
or incident requirement, great stuff but who is going
to pay an enhanced rate for attendance and they are
even trying to include Micro EV’s, stop start fitted
technology to you and me and lastly if it is severely
damaged where are you going to store this potential
dangerous vehicle for how much and do you have the
insurance for this risk.
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