The Mersey Gateway is a new six lane toll bridge over the Mersey between the towns of Runcorn and Widnes.
Run by a company called Merseyflow, the bridge operates what they call a free-flow tolling system produced by a company called Emovis. This in practice means three are no toll booths. You can pay up to 12 months before you cross the Mersey Gateway or Silver Jubilee bridges or until 11.59pm the day after you cross. If you don’t pay on time you will receive a Penalty Charge Notice of up to £60.
The bridge officially opened on Saturday 14th October 2017 and complaints from farmers using the bridge started to trickle into the NFU by November as unfair fines began to hit their doormats.
Issues which quickly came to light included Merseyflow’s number plate recognition technology being unable to properly identify tractors with trailers. This is because tractors have no front number plate. This forced Merseyflow’s system into reading the back plate on the trailer, which in many cases is different to the one on the tractor. Of course, it’s perfectly legal for a tractor and trailer to have different number plates providing the trailer’s number plate links back to another tractor owned by the same person.
On top of this issue, farmers were being charged for the wrong category, the system was reading letters on the number plates incorrectly and one member phoned Merseyflow and was told he could use the bridge free of charge while his neighbour did the exact same thing and had to pay a toll.
Put simply, confusion reigned until NFU Lancashire County Chairman Olly Harrison intervened.
NFU Lancashire County Chairman Olly Harrison
Olly said: “After weeks of emailing Merseyflow and Emovis without success I heard that the bridge toll charges was an item being debated in Parliament on 5 December. So I texted my MP Maria Eagle that morning and informed her of the serious problems a small amount of her farming constituents were experiencing. To her credit Maria raised my concerns and suddenly progress started to be made.
“We finally met with Merseyflow on 13 February and they agreed that the system didn’t work for tractors pulling trailers and suggested farmers should email in their details so that Merseyflow could manually process the details in an effort to reduce the amount of needless fines being sent out.”
Shortly after the meeting Halton Borough Council and the Mersey Gateway Crossings Board launched a consultation to get views on proposed changes to the Mersey Gateway Bridge toll charging regime – part of this included agricultural tractors being entered onto the exemptions register.
More than 6,000 responses were received. The response resulted in 51% disagreeing (3,171) and 49% agreeing (3,099) that tractors should be exempt - so a slight vote against. However, based on it being such a close result, the council has agreed that agricultural tractors will be able to be added onto the exemptions register for use of the Silver Jubilee Bridge only, with exemptions allowed on the Mersey Gateway Bridge in the interim.
Olly added: “Considering the small amount of farmers in the geographic area this is an excellent result and a sign that the persistence of the NFU can pay off.”
For Merseyflow to offer you an exemption account, they would require a copy of the V5C for each vehicle to clarify they are agricultural vehicles. Regarding vehicles not previously registered they would require a payment of £5 registration fee per vehicle.
If you have any further questions contact Merseyflow on 01928 878877, their lines are open Monday to Saturday 9am to 5.30pm or visit www.merseyflow.co.uk