26/02/2010
Car Dismantlers need to work with government
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DANGEROUS cars that have escaped scrappage are illegally managing to return onto the UK’s roads. Bluecycle reports that 1 MILLION cars a year are escaping scrappage because there are not enough resources to govern their destruction. This means dodgy scrapyards are ‘bringing cars back from the dead’, at the expense of official car dismantlers. It’s why Bluecycle wants the Government to get its act together and step up enforcement of the European End of Life Vehicles directive – the ELV that stipulates all scrappage cars be issued with a Certificate of Description. This is something car dealers will be only too familiar with, which will make the news that some cars are escaping it all the more alarming. Figures from the DVLA show that around 2 million cars a year are taken off the road, generating some 3.5 million tonnes of scrap. This figure has recently been boosted by around half a million tonnes more as a result of the Government’s scrappage scheme, which finishes at the end of March. However, there are ONLY 1 million Certificates of Destruction issued! Bluecycle’s Andy Latham, said ‘it is a legal requirement for ATFs to issue a Certificate of Destruction to prove that a vehicle has been correctly destroyed but the DVLA does not require one to confirm that it has been taken off the road. ‘We’re caught in a ‘Lazarus effect’ where something like fifty per cent of vehicles scrapped don’t get a Certificate of Destruction. ‘Until the audit trail is tightened up and more unauthorised sites are closed down, we cannot expect this figure to reduce by much.’ This, he added, ‘could put someone’s life at risk if a car finds its way back onto the road.’
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