TUESDAY 19 JULY 2005
Present:
Andrew Burt (chairman) Tony Beadle John Billard
David Davies Michael Edwards Colin Francis
Sandy Hamilton David Hurley David Marsh
Peter Mead Rosy Pugh Mike Young
In attendance:
Derek Grossmark (vice president) Geoff Smith (vice president) Ian Edmunds (CBQC)
Alan Putt (FIVA ID cards) John Symes (Motor Sports Association) Jim Whyman (secretary)1. Apologies for absence
Lord Montagu; Jacqueline Bickerstaff; Julian Ghosh; Tim Holt.
2. FIVA ID Cards
The chairman introduced Alan Putt to the meeting and invited him to comment on looking after the issue of FIVA ID cards, a job that he had been doing since Martin Grant Peterkin’s retirement in October 2004.
Alan described his background and his wide involvement with historic motor sport (he had served on the MSA Historic Committee from the 1970s and was still involved in inspecting cars for FIA historic racing purposes). He said that his FIVA work had gone relatively smoothly, but there had been occasional problems, particularly with the more mundane vehicles from the 1960s onwards which were used for some quite tough regularity rallies. Many such vehicles had been modified, often with out-of-period features, and it had been difficult to reconcile some of these with the FIVA vehicle classifications. There was an assumption in some quarters that the “X” category was a “catch-all” classification into which any modified vehicle could be placed. He did not subscribe to that idea as the rules quite clearly stated that alterations had to be in keeping with the period. He had checked with the FIVA Technical Commission that his interpretation of the rules was correct.
He said he had been sent a copy of a letter from the Historic Rally Car Register to FBHVC complaining that vehicles that complied with MSA and HRCR regulations had been refused ID cards. He had replied explaining that the FIVA ID card was a reflection of a car’s eligibility under FIVA rules and had no relevance to any other set of regulations. In general, event organisers could choose what sort of vehicles they wanted in their events. The biggest eligibility problem was with low profile tyres, and Alan said he had made a point of obtaining specific confirmation that FIVA would not issue an ID card for a pre-1971 car fitted with tyres of 70% or lower profile unless there was documentary evidence that such tyres had been fitted as original equipment.
One area where UK was open to criticism was on vehicle inspection: FIVA rules required vehicles to be inspected, FBHVC gave applicants the opportunity to nominate their own inspectors, and this was recognised as being unsatisfactory. The problem was that any more formal arrangement would inevitably lead to greater cost.
A wide ranging discussion ensued, during which some detailed cases and examples were discussed and the very purpose of ID cards was questioned. Several made the point that FIVA was there to help people use old vehicles and that it should not put unnecessary hurdles in the way of doing so. Alan mentioned various papers he had written for the FIVA Technical Commission with the aim of helping to make the technical code more clear, and commented that he shared the belief that FIVA was there to help, but not at the expense of colluding in breaking its own rules.
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The meeting expressed its gratitude to Alan for his work and for attending the meeting. The secretary was asked to write to HRCR confirming Alan’s position on tyres. It was agreed that the secretary and Alan Putt should work on a way of improving the vehicle inspection procedure and that Alan’s thoughts on an improved application form should be considered at a future meeting. JW
3. Approval of minutes of meeting of 10 May 2005
The chairman signed the minutes of the meeting of 10 May as accurate.
4. Matters Arising from previous meeting
Shows The secretary confirmed that the stand at Beaulieu would be adjacent to the press tent. There would be space for the FBHVC tent, but little more. He had made an initial request for an exhibit from the museum and was awaiting a response. Space at NEC had been promised, but it was not yet known where this would be. The Register of Unusual Microcars had promised to find a suitable exhibit. JW
Member clubs The secretary reported that renewals were coming in steadily, although not as quickly as in previous years.
Insurance There had been no developments on the proposed “no small print” insurance scheme save that Willis (the brokers involved) had been in contact to say they were still optimistic of putting together a scheme. The secretary said he would be seeing Peter James of Footman James shortly to see if there was any possibility of improving the current scheme to enable smaller clubs to obtain Public Liability insurance at a more realistic rate. JW
5. UK Legislation
David Hurley said that the minutes of the June meeting of the legislation committee showed the current position save for three recent developments:-
Matt Vincent had reported that a proposed Low Emission Zones for many London Boroughs had been discussed at a meeting of the Environmental Industries Commission that he had attended. Such zones are tentatively scheduled to come into force in January 2008, and Deloittes has been commissioned to carry out a feasibility study. No thought has been given to the position of historic vehicles. David Hurley said he would be making contact with Michael Youngman of Deloittes who is leading the study. DH
David Hurley said he was looking into concerns that proposed new regulation for light railways might have an adverse effect on operators of preserved trolley buses. DH
A consultation, closing on 5 August, on revisions to the MoT Tester’s guide had been issued by VOSA. The revisions related to proposed use of Automated Testing Lines that would enable tests to be undertaken without assistance. There was nothing contentious, but the secretary would be responding. JW
There was general concern that the new computerised system for MoT tests was causing significant problems. The secretary said he had taken up some specific problems with VOSA, but had yet to receive a response. He had invited VOSA to attend the conference after the AGM to talk on testing historic vehicles in the electronic age and to answer questions. An invitation had also been made to attend the next legislation committee meeting. JW
6. Parliamentary Historic Vehicles Club
Geoff Smith said he had been trying to get a meeting with what was now known as the All Party Parliamentary Historic Vehicles Group before the summer recess, but that had proved impossible. A meeting was being planned for October.
Greg Knight and Kelvin Hopkins had accepted the invitation to come to Beaulieu and would be attending the next committee meeting.
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- 3 -7. EU Legislation
The chairman said he was not aware of anything to add to the recent EU Update issued by FIVA and distributed prior to the meeting. He commented that he was pleased to see that Ari Vatanen’s amendment urging that planned legislation should consider the position historic vehicles had been adopted by the Transport Committee, and was likely to be adopted by the whole parliament. This amendment had its roots in the meeting the chairman had had with Ari Vatanen in 2003.
The secretary said he had received a substantial file about Passenger Car Taxation from Andrew Turner of EPPA. It seems that the European Commission is keen to see better harmonisation of vehicle registration taxes to ease free circulation within the Union – at present those moving from one country to another were likely to be faced with taxation on re-registering a vehicle in the new country of residence having already paid tax when registering the vehicle in their previous country and the aim was to reduce or prevent such double taxation. The secretary said he would try to understand how the proposals might affect the free movement of historic vehicles within the Union. JW
8. FIVA Report
Geoff Smith reported progress with the EU wide survey and thanked those who had participated in a pilot run by completing a draft questionnaire. He said that the exercise had highlighted some weaknesses in the questionnaire which was being adjusted accordingly. A recent meeting in Leiden had resulted in agreement to proceed and the aim was to get the questionnaires printed and distributed in September for return by the end of the year. The aim was to complete the research in time to publish the results at a function in Brussels in July 2006. GS
The chairman said that FIVA had published a report based on research undertaken by Dr Winfried Kallinger of Austria showing how different EU countries defined and catered for historic vehicles. He offered his congratulations to Dr Kallinger on a well-executed and very worthwhile undertaking.
9. DVLA
Sandy Hamilton said that he and the secretary would be attending a routine liaison meeting at DVLA in August. There was little new to report save that the problems that DVLA had experienced with the distribution of the new Harmonised Registration Certificates were continuing, and the recent advertising campaign had made the situation worse by encouraging people to apply for new documents for vehicles that were unlikely to see the road for years – if ever. The backlog for V765 applications had grown to two months, and was likely to get worse before there was any improvement.
10. Finance and Planning
Copies of unaudited accounts for the 2004/5 year had been circulated with the agenda for the meeting. The result appeared to be some £3,500 better than that predicted at the May meeting. Much of the difference was a totally unexpected commission payment from Marsh, the insurance brokers who had operated a Club’s Public Liability cover scheme that had been supported by FBHVC but which had been superseded by the Footman James arrangement during the Holt-Chasteauneuf years. Marsh had discovered unpaid commission during an audit and had paid it over. Other improvements stemmed from savings on expenditure where accruals used to prepare the May figures had proved unduly pessimistic.
The secretary said that the accounts would have to be signed off prior to the Beaulieu meeting in order to comply with FBHVC rules on distribution of material for general meetings. The meeting agreed that the chairman and another bank signatory should be authorised to sign the accounts on behalf of all, provided there was no material difference between the figures the committee had seen and the audited accounts.
A. Consideration of proposed 5-year plan
A draft 5-year plan entitled “Vision 2005-2010” had been prepared following a meeting in June attended by the chairman, vice chairman, Mike Young, John Billard and the secretary. The draft was discussed in some detail.Prompted by a question from Derek Grossmark, the chairman enlarged on the section relating to heritage. He explained that both FIVA and FBHVC had made their pitch to authority on the basis of preserving the
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right to use old vehicles, and had, as a consequence, largely been considered as part of the motoring lobby. There was a growing interest in preservation of heritage throughout Europe, and there could be distinct lobbying advantages to the historic vehicle movement if it was considered for its heritage credentials – for encouraging the preservation of national transport heritage – rather than just as a motoring organisation. This could open up new avenues of support, and possibly of funding, for projects such as the EU survey that FIVA was about to undertake. The Vatanen amendment, mentioned earlier, was a clear illustration of the benefit of such thinking as the effect was to use the perceived benefit of encouraging preservation of transport heritage as a reason to give special consideration to the use of such vehicles in future legislation. The proposal in the 5-year plan was to investigate such possibilities
The chairman went on to mention that the Transport Trust, a UK umbrella body drawing together all elements of transport heritage, had asked for assistance with providing a commentary on how heritage issues are handled in the transport sector in this country and in other countries in EU with a view to facilitating best practice. The study, covering all areas of heritage preservation, is being undertaken at the request of government by Heritage Link, a loose grouping of all types of heritage based bodies, and the Transport Trust has been asked to provide the representation on behalf of the transport sector. It was agreed that the chairman should give the Transport Trust every co-operation in this endeavour. AB
Derek Grossmark commented that the need to improve communication and telling people what we were doing was an ever recurrent theme in FBHVC forward planning and he considered this to be the most important point on which to focus.
There was a brief discussion about how best to improve such communication with suggestions of “Power Point” and/or DVD presentations being put forward by Mike Young and Tony Beadle respectively, and Peter Mead suggesting that FBHVC might consider an educational unit to work with schools and colleges to teach youngsters both about their transport heritage and about the historic vehicle movement that keeps that heritage alive, thus improving communication and reaching potential young enthusiasts – another important element of the plan.
The meeting adopted the draft plan without amendment and agreed that time should be set aside at the next meeting to decide how to take forward the different actions that had been proposed. JW
11. Other matters
The secretary said that Kelsey Publishing had paid £500 to FBHVC to enable each of their titles to become trade supporters. More importantly, Kelsey had agreed that the FBHVC Trade Supporter logo should appear in each of their historic transport titles.
………… .…………………………….. Chairman P H J Whyman, Secretary.