Matthew visited Sovereign Trailers in West Hendon Broadway to highlight the increasing problem of bureaucracy damaging business. Sovereign Trailers based behind the Welsh Harp Boat Shop produce quality road trailers for sailing boats and are a success story of British manufacturing. Sovereign sell their popular trailers across the UK but also export internationally, with a large majority of customers in America and Europe.
Unfortunately, the business has recently had to radically alter the design of the trailers at great cost in order to obey new EU regulations. The new EU rules are currently enforced in the UK by VOSA (Vehicle and Operators Services Agency) and to add insult to injury, VOSA requires trailer manufactures to pay a quite considerable amount of money for regular VOSA inspections to ensure the correct rules are followed.
“These new trailer regulations are a very unwelcome additional cost that I either have to pass on to the customer or, as I do currently, absorb the cost myself”, says Rob O’Neill
Matthew added: “There are two main issues. Firstly, there is the problem of unnecessary red tape brought in by the EU that hinders British manufacturing and secondly, there is the unfair situation that some businesses across not just the EU but also in the UK do not follow the rules. This puts legitimate companies at a disadvantage. I shall be taking up this issue with ministers in Parliament as it is not right that EU bureaucracy is strangling the life out of local businesses who are the bedrock of economic recovery.”