Guidelines to ease heavy vehicle confusion

MORE than 400 local councils and six state and territory governments will now have access to new guidelines to better assess and apply conditions to permits for heavy vehicles.
National Heavy Vehicle Regulator (NHVR) chief executive officer Sal Petroccitto said the release of two guidance documents would deliver consistency and standardise the conditions that can be applied to a heavy vehicle permit.
“The Road Manager’s Best Practice Guideline for Applying Conditions provides invaluable direction to road managers on the types of conditions to be applied in a permit.
“Whereas, the Standard Conditions – Legislative Requirements outlines the key operational requirements for class 1 heavy vehicles carrying, or designed to carry, a large indivisible article and special purpose vehicles. This will assist operators to better understand their legal requirements and provide increased confidence in the process.
“With these tools in use, we expect to see a drop in the number of unnecessary and invalid conditions applied and a reduction in permit processing time, benefitting local councils, state government and industry.”
The NHVR has developed and implemented the documents as a result of extensive consultation with local and state government road managers to ensure they were fit for purpose.
They aim to assist through providing a step by step guide to assessing application and applying conditions, consideration when applying conditions, example sets of standard road and travel conditions, and examples of conditions covered by the law.
Importantly, they also call out invalid conditions and the reasons why they are not required on a permit.
Australian Local Government Association president Troy Pickard said accurate and reliable permit conditions were a big win for road managers working in councils across the country.
“We congratulate the NHVR for delivering on these documents and making them available to councils Australia-wide.”