FORS chair Steve Agg opened to an introduction by the venue host, Logistics Skills Alliance at Heathrow. Guests of the FORS group include FedEx TNT, Travis Perkins, DPD, Veolia, Tarmac and O’Donavan Waste.

The business of the FORS governance agenda looked at the numbers; Anne Johnson showed the increasing membership, closing on its five-thousandth member and spread across the UK, was increasing. A big reason for audit failures had been failure to complete eyesight tests. Heavy driver health checks picked this up, but light vehicle, van drivers were often not checked by the operators. Eyesight failure at middle age in the driver workforce often goes unchecked, but it is an audit item in FORS and the group pushed for greater clarity and the message to be pushed wider.

Paul Wilkes explained services; audit visits that grew in number for the summer months, 6 month plans beyond the year diaries were a challenge in this pre-peak period. James Tyler talked software with the new FORS management program that already had a hundred users, helping to manage the audit process for operators. John Hix reviewed mixed fleet audit options and took a look at rules in FORS for left-hand-drive vehicles - ‘they are not all foreign’ -  particular focus on road-sweeper machines led to a discussion on blind-spots in regard to which side of the vehicle had the steering wheel.

James Tyler moved on to counter-terrorism and issues around vehicles used as weapons. Other new industry developments included a view on airside vehicles for FORS. Two wheel was on the agenda, as a first meeting to review two wheels options for a FORS accreditation scheme had already taken place.