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Proposed new legislation to decimate wheelchair-accessible vehicle industry

It is now or never to make your voice heard against the proposed new EU legislation which looks set to destroy the UK's wheelchair-accessible vehicle industry.

Framework Directive 70/156/EEC might sound innocuous, but its effects will be far from that. Due to come into force early next year, the new law will reduce the number of adapted vehicles of a particular model that a manufacturer can sell from 500 a year to 75.

Currently, the UK's Low Volume Type Approval (LVTA) allows a manufacturer to sell sufficient vehicles to recoup the considerable investment that producing a wheelchair-accessible conversion entails - not least the £50,000-plus cost of obtaining LVTA for each model. If this number is reduced from 500 to 75, it will become impossible to run a viable business in this way, meaning that the present situation, with approximately 25 companies competing to provide a good choice of accessible vehicles at affordable prices, will change to one where probably many fewer businesses will survive, with less choice at higher cost to the disabled user.

The entire annual UK market consists of approximately 8000 cars of several different models.

WAVCA, the trade association for the industry, had actually been lobbying the government to increase the 500 car limit to 1000 a year - so the discovery that the Department for Trade had allowed instead a decrease to 75, has come as a bitter blow to them. Linda Ling, Managing Director of founding member, Gowrings Mobility, comments, "What is galling about the forthcoming legislation is that our concerns have not been taken seriously, and that disabled people have not been consulted with at all and their needs are being swept aside. It is another case of European rules coming across from Brussels without considering the effect on British industry or the customers that rely on their products."

There is one last chance to influence events before this Framework Directive becomes law in 2007, and that is if MEPs challenge the draft legislation when it goes before the European Parliament for its second reading. You can help to increase the possibility of that happening, by writing to both your MP and your MEP to let them know that you are opposed to this law.

Our editor has taken this up with Anne MacGuire, the minister for disabled people, and is awaiting her response. We will of course continue to raise awareness of the situation in every quarter.

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