December Partnership Meeting Tweet #

We now have a venue and agenda (see below) confirmed for the North East Freight Partnership December meeting.

The venue is The Place, Sunderland, Sunderland College Athenaeum Street, Sunniside Sunderland SR1 1QX, a short walk from Sunderland Rail Station. Please follow link for directions : http://sunderlandcollege.ac.uk/about-us/our-centres/theplace/

The consultants working on the strategic study of the Northern Trans-Pennine corridor (A69 and A66) will be in attendance at the meeting to give more details about the study and seek feedback from members of the Partnership. This is an excellent opportunity to have your say about these important routes and we would particularly encourage operators to attend this meeting and outline what improvements you would like to see.

Safer Urban Driving Tweet #BIKE

The North East Freight Partnership, supported by the Go-Smarter initiative and training providers Fleet Source http://www.fleetsource.co.uk, is providing a programme of six Safe Urban Driving workshops for drivers in the region. The training (which is Driver CPC accredited) aims to encourage greater awareness of good driving practices around vulnerable road users such as cyclists. The course consists of two 3.5 hour modules (both delivered on the same day); the first module is classroom based theory, and the second module, an outdoor practical session where drivers get a cyclists view of the road.


















We are pleased to offer these courses free of charge to operators who regularly use the A1 and A19 (otherwise a £75 fee is charged per place). The training venue for all six courses will be Bluewatch Youth Centre, Burdon Lane, Ryhope, Sunderland, SR2 0HR.

The dates of the six courses are as follows:

• October 10th 2015
• October 24th 2015
• October 31st 2015

• February 27th 2016
• March 12th 2016
• March 19th 2016

North East Freight Partnership in the Press Tweet #

The Freight Partnership has been featured on the Freight in the City website. Freight in the City is a new initiative from Road Transport Media Ltd, the organiser of Quiet Cities and publisher of Commercial Motor, Motor Transport, Truck & Driver, and Van Advisor.

Freight in the City has been created to provide a central resource and platform for anyone involved in helping to make freight transportation as clean, safe and quiet as possible.

Paul Davison spoke to Freight in the City about the activities of the Partnership and what it had achieved.

Link to the article here

Rail Newcastle conference Tweet #

Partnership Chair John Bourn, from the North East Combined Authority’s Regional Transport Team, attended the Rail Newcastle conference on 16th July. Organised by Newrail, the University of Newcastle’s Centre for Railway Research, this very successful and well-attended event involved a range of speakers from around Europe discussing various issues affecting the rail and transport industry, including some interesting discussion of the issues and challenges affecting plans to increase rail freight traffic.

For more details about Newrail, please visit their website at http://www.ncl.ac.uk/newrail

FORS Workshop Update Tweet #

We run a range of free CPC accredited workshops to share best practice and help you meet your legal obligations. Sessions focus on key issues, including safety, penalty charge notices and fuel efficiency.

Workshop dates in the North East and London can be found and booked at: http://www.eventbrite.co.uk/o/fleet-operator-recognition-scheme-fors-2410121576

Welcome to the North East Freight Partnership Tweet #

Welcome to the North East Freight Partnership website. We welcome Durham and Northumberland Local Authorities to the partnership. The partnership aims remain the same but in the coming months the freight mapping will be updated to cover key locations in Durham and Northumberland.

New North East Mobile Route Planner Tweet #

Open the web page for the mobile route planner in your mobile device using the following link: http://tyneandwearfreight.info/mobile/mapapp.aspx

The route planner should automatically locate your current location if you have a device capable of this. To start finding the route to a destination in Tyne and Wear click on the Set Route button at the top of the map.

Select the location you wish to travel to from the list of industrial locations.

Select the destination within the selected industrial location from the list of available companies.

To start planning a route click on the "Plan Route" button

The route is displayed on the map.

Selected turn-by-turn directions as needed

Smart Urban Freight Conference Tweet #

Further information on the conference here: http://www.smartfusion.eu/news-events/events and the agenda can be downloaded here.

Participation is free of charge but registration is required here: register here. If anyone from the partnership is able to attend, the usual pop-up banner and/ or literature will of course be welcome.

First SMARTSET Conference and Transnational Network Meeting Tweet #

"City Logistics - What Tools does a City need to reach CO2-free City Logistics”?

This event will take place on Tuesday, 12th of May 2015, in Graz, Austria.

The European project SMARTSET - co-funded by the Intelligent Energy Europe Programme - started in 2013 to promote the need for more efficient city logistics solutions that lead to fewer transport kilometres and more sustainable business models in eight European cities.

The SMARTSET Conference and Transnational Network Meeting will bring together stakeholders from across Europe: representatives from policy level, knowledge carriers, and cities implementing or planning to implement sustainable city logistic measures.

Additionally to presentations and discussions on efficient urban transport initiatives, the conference will provide the possibility to bring material and present posters from projects and initiatives in the field of sustainable logistics from cities all over Europe. An evening reception will provide further possibilities for exchange and networking.

Under the following link you find further information on the conference and the agenda. SMARTSET-Conference

The participation is free of charge but registration is required under: Registration to the SMARTSET-Conference Deadline for registration is the 27th of April 2015.

Freight Awards Tweet #

The North East Freight Partnership is keen to recognise the vitally important work that HGV Drivers play in ensuring the goods that we all use reaches our homes, businesses and workplaces safely, efficiently and on-time. Therefore, we have created the North East HGV Driver of the year award, which aims to reward the region’s best HGV drivers and promote good working practices

North East Driver of the year 2015 Award - went to Ian Rutherford of Abacus Haulage for his dedication in reducing fuel cost, increasing efficiencies and considering the environment



















North East Driver of the Year 2015, Lifetime Achievement Award - went to Brian Curtis of AG Barr who in his 34 years of working has never taken a day sick leave. He has driven 2million Km delivered to 109,000 accounts 3 million cases of soft drinks.



















North East Operator of the Year 2015 – went to Alex Smiles Ltd – who have regularly supported the Partnership and its aspiration for disseminating best practice to the industry.
They have seen the benefits of FORS and subsequently have allocated time for their staff to become FORS practitioners and have sponsored the FORS workshops on two occasions at their company premises.

Partnership Meeting Tweet #

The March quarterly Partnership meeting was well attended, with 24 people giving up their time. It is the final meeting for 2014-15. download presentation here.

Next Quarterly Partnership Meeting
3^rd June 2015
Time - 10:30
Venue – TBC

Next Rail Partner Meeting
23^rd June 2015
Time – 11:00
Venue – TBC

Refurbished Cycles to Africa Tweet #

Transport leaders set out vision for city freight - PTEG Tweet #

Urban transport leaders have called for freight to be moved off city centre roads at ‘every opportunity’ to improve safety, reduce congestion and develop more enjoyable streets. A report from the Passenger Transport Executive Group (pteg) highlights that transportation of goods to city areas is essential to the UK economy but must be taken by rail and water as much as possible. City railway stations have a ‘great potential’ to act as central hubs for the distribution of goods and could act as ‘high speed mobile warehouses’ for freight services, according to the ‘Delivering the future’ report.
http://www.transport-network.co.uk/Transport-leaders-set-out-vision-for-city-freight/11422

FORS Workshop Update Tweet #

The workshops 4, 5 and 6, 7 were well attended, the feedback to the courses being very good. Thank you to Counted 4 at Sunderland for hosting the January workshop and the Port of Tyne for hosting the workshop early February. The workshops are open to companies registered on the Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS). The Tyne and Wear Freight Partnership continue to provide funded FORS workshops until the end of March 2015.



We believe at the age of 17 Josh is the youngest person to attain the FORS Practitioner certificate in Tyne and Wear, was well done to him.

There are six workshops you can still attend

FORS Workshop Update Tweet #

The Tyne and Wear Freight Partnership continue to provide funded FORS workshops, the latest one took place at Lafarge Tarmac, Birtley on January 13^th 2015. Three more people who have attended 9 workshops received their FORS Practitioner Certificates on the 13^th January, well done to them. The of power points for the presentations can be viewed here: workshop 2 and workshop 3



The workshops are open to companies registered on the Fleet Operator Recognition Scheme (FORS), they have been well attended, with the feedback to the courses being very good.

We strongly recommend registering if you are considering joining the FORS scheme. Another 10 workshops over 5 days are to be still to be delivered until the end of March as shown in the following table: