West Midlands Police’s approach to abnormal load movements has broken away from how national rules are applied elsewhere in the UK, driving up costs and risking delays to HS2 and other major transport and infrastructure projects, the Construction Plant-hire Association (CPA) has warned.
The CPA represents more than 2,000 plant-hire and heavy haulage firms supplying the cranes, piling rigs, rail maintenance vehicles and specialist machinery underpinning major construction, transport and infrastructure schemes across the country.
Under national rules, companies moving abnormal loads are required to notify the police in advance – not seek permission. The system is designed to allow police to manage safety and traffic disruption, not to approve or block compliant movements. For more than two decades, most abnormal loads have been safely self-escorted by trained operators, with police escorts used only where there is a clear and exceptional risk.
The CPA says the national approach was reaffirmed in updated guidance from the National Police Chiefs’ Council (NPCC), developed with police forces and industry to ensure consistency and proportionality in the handling of abnormal loads.
While this framework operates as intended across most of the UK, the CPA says West Midlands Police’s approach makes it a national outlier. Members report notifications being treated as if they require approval, with additional technical information being demanded despite no change in national policy. Operators have been forced to use police escorts where, under normal circumstances and in other areas, self-escorting would be perfectly acceptable.
Freedom of Information disclosures show how over a five-year period, West Midlands Police increased its income from abnormal load escorting from around £15,000 to approximately £1.1 million – a shift industry figures argue risks skewing decision-making and undermining the original intent of the regime.
Evidence gathered through a CPA survey of its 2,000-strong membership points to rising costs, project disruption and growing uncertainty across the supply chain, with more than two-thirds of affected firms reporting serious project delays linked to the force’s approach.
Steve Mulholland, Chief Executive of the Construction Plant-hire Association, said:
“This isn’t about safety – it’s about misinterpretation and incentives that are putting HS2 and major infrastructure projects at risk.
“NPCC guidance was designed to bring national consistency to how abnormal loads are handled, and industry engaged with it in good faith. But if individual forces choose not to follow it, the system stops working.
“When notifications are treated as approvals and operators are pushed towards unnecessary police escorts, it drives up costs, delays projects and drains confidence from infrastructure delivery.
“You simply cannot deliver HS2 or major rail and construction projects if the machinery needed to build them is held up by regional policy drift.
“We need an urgent return to a single, nationally consistent interpretation of the rules, so compliant movements are treated the same way in every part of the country.”
Implications are particularly acute for HS2 and other nationally significant schemes. The West Midlands is a critical transit corridor for abnormal loads supporting rail, energy and infrastructure projects, meaning local disruption quickly translates into national delays and higher costs.
Concerns over the force’s approach have also been raised repeatedly in Parliament. In the House of Lords, Earl Attlee has criticised the tactics employed by West Midlands Police, saying they resemble those he would “expect to see used by a corrupt police force in a slowly developing country”.
He told peers he had personally witnessed officers harassing the drivers and crew of what he described as “one of the most professional heavy haulage companies in the land”.
CPA members say the issue is escalating. Firms operating in the West Midlands have reported sudden changes to the information demanded in abnormal load notifications, with movements rejected despite complying with national rules.
The CPA warns that ongoing policy divergence risks undermining confidence and investment across the construction and transport supply chain, putting HS2 and other major infrastructure projects at risk, and is calling on the Department for Transport to restore a nationally consistent approach.
