The Road Haulage Association’s (RHA) decision to take a hard line on operators entering into Company Voluntary Arrangements (CVA) or making use of pre-pack administrations, has proved popular with the membership.
"Anyone that enters into a CVA is trading an a commercial advantage compared with the majority of operators," said John Howells, the RHA’s regional director for the Eastern and Southern regions of the policy announcement made early this month.
Howells said that while there were often genuine reasons for operators to restructure debt, the RHA now rightly had a process of oversight to apply to any members making use of these legal processes.
While the RHA is not actively searching for companies in its membership that are in CVAs (those emerging as new businesses after a pre-pack exercise have their membership removed as a matter of course) "as we come across them, we will deal with them", said Howells, who said the membership was highly active in regards this point.
All companies barred from membership can reapply to their regional councils, who will then refer any operators that they are concerned about to the RHA’s executive board for a final decision.
