Question to the Department for Transport:

To ask the Secretary of State for Transport, with reference to his announcement of 5 April 2018, what the evidential basis is for his Department’s decision that fair competition would be sustained in the wet concrete market industry when Mobile Batching Concrete Plants (MCBPs) will have their payloads reduced, on average by 35%, to below the payloads currently carried by Barrel Concrete Mixers.

The Department has put in place a 10-year temporary arrangement enabling some mobile concrete batching plant to operate in excess of standard weight limits to provide time for the operators of these vehicles to come into compliance with the currently-applicable legal limits, which also apply to barrel concrete mixers.

At the end of that temporary period, there will be common weight limits across different modes of concrete delivery, helping to facilitate fair competition. The Department is aware that there are different maximum legal payloads for different vehicle types, due to differing unladen weights.